Information for People with Disabilities who are visiting SANParks
General
Introduction to travelling to the parks for people with disabilities
Travel for people with disabilities can be scary, because it means moving to unfamiliar destinations. South African National Parks would love to be considered accessible destinations that all people regardless of their mental, sensory or physical capabilities can visit without any difficulties. The shape of the natural environment and uninformed people’s attitudes and actions often limits this, but still within the 22 parks many wonderful opportunities exist for those people with special requirements.
These pages are geared towards informing readers of these opportunities. It is perhaps focused more on physical access as the information has been compiled by a staff member who is himself a paraplegic, and while everyone is different with different requirements, it is hoped that the information here will benefit those people who do not know the layout of the various destinations. While factors like transport, spare time and financial resources are factors for everyone, it is hoped that visitors to the parks will encounter as few barriers as possible.
Most of the camps and visitor destinations in all of the parks provide ramped access. In many cases accessible ablution facilities are provided. Furthermore most of the parks accommodation offerings have selected units that have been adapted for use by the mobility impaired. The descriptions on accessibility in National Parks as found under each park pertain to physical access for people with mobility impairment (NB These descriptions are found under PARKS/Wheelchair Access and only summaries plus Kruger’s detailed descriptions are found here). These will apply to people in wheelchairs, on crutches, with prams, with frailty or reduced energy levels.
If you are making a booking and have special accessibility requirements, please request to be allocated the appropriate accommodation. Because the accessible accommodation with special adaptations (such as converted ablutions) is in limited supply, some of these units are kept on reserve up until 3 months before date of occupation. Thereafter they are released onto the system for any person to book. Please be aware that only designated SANParks reservations supervisors have access to these facilities at this time and call centre staff and staff in all the satellite reservations offices countrywide will need to channel your request through to such supervisors.
To make comments and suggestions or to view those from other persons with disabilities go to the discussion forum elsewhere on this site and click on the section for people with disabilities.