With her granddaughter on her lap, Monique enjoys a trip to the North Sea in a wheelchair on the beach. In Belgium, people with poor mobility, like Ostend, have access to eight beaches.
“I always wanted to experience the waves and the ocean, but I couldn’t,” Monique Breken told Euroneus.
Flemish Agency Inter launched the “Sun, Sea… Ear Toddler” program in 2006, making it accessible to everyone on the Belgian coast. The program offers users a free beach wheelchair. Some of them are electricity, tyraros, and floating amphibian models to make swimming easier.
“I loved it. I was totally soaked when I went out. It was amazing. My grandson enjoyed it too.
Each facility features changing rooms, toilets and showers. Parking spaces are available for those with reduced mobility and access ramps, and the site is located near the tram stop. The wide beaches in Belgium have created solid paths on the sand to allow wheelchair users to get closer to the ocean.
I accompanied him on a swimming session
Bert Permentier, founder of the Sun, the Sea, explains that carefree, he had to adapt his solution to the particularities of the North Sea.
“Sometimes the ocean is far from the coast. And we also have rough seas. That’s not the same as the Mediterranean. That’s another challenge we have here in Belgium,” he explained.
Therefore, in some Greek, Italian and Cyprus coasts, users can swim completely independently thanks to the automated Sitrak gangway, but this system is not suitable for Belgian coastlines.
He argues there are two key factors to ensuring that people who reduce mobility have access to the coast: not only provide adapted infrastructure and equipment, but also provide support.
If necessary, the assistant can push the wheelchair user into the sand and accompany him while he swims.
“We enter the water with people who have never been to the ocean,” explains Keiko Scherk, swimming assistant for Ostend’s “Sun, Sea, Carefree” program, referring to Tyraro.
“We help them. We follow the waves a little. It’s really fun.”
Joyce Vyncke, who trains attendants, spoke emotionally about the project and how some end-of-life care users would like to see the ocean at the end.
Free service
The completely free service for users is primarily funded by local governments.
“We don’t pay anything, we want to have the beach as a public service for everyone,” Maxim Donck, councillor for Accessibility in Ostend, told Euronows.
In his view, it is also a tourist attraction.
“There are 372 unique people who used the facility at Ostend this summer, and only 100 people came from Ostend or Flanders, so the majority come from outside of town.
In Europe, other solutions exist. In France, for example, the handplagi label lists beaches that can be accessed by people with reduced mobility.
The 2008 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) provides for the rights of people with disabilities to equal access to leisure and sports.
