You don't fully realize that maybe not everyone can push those chairs and get to where they want to go.
— John Gleason, Director, Barnstable Recreation Department
Barriers to the Beach, Part 4: Where Waves Meet Reality
The power of sea combined with shortages in both cash and personnel bring reality crashing into the best of intentions.
By Anna Westerberg and Tao Woolfe
Click on image to watch the video news story
11 September, 2025 – HYANNIS, MA – Patty Ericson-Taylor lives with her spouse on Sea Street in Hyannis. In one direction lies Hyannis Main Street; in the other rise the dunes and the ocean beyond. Ericson-Taylor always prefers the sea.
“And then I had my stroke,” she recalled, “and I said, ‘How am I gonna’ get onto the beaches?’”
What is the solution?
At first, a solution seemed in hand: the town of Barnstable provides floatable beach wheelchairs to residents who need them. But the chairs are heavy, and Ericson-Taylor’s spouse, Dawn Ericson-Taylor, could not push them through the sand.
Ericson-Taylor also realized that none of the town’s beaches offered accessible paths that reached all the way across the sand.
Working for change
Two year ago, Ericson-Taylor joined the town’s Disability Commission and promptly emailed the recreation department, asking them to do more. The recreation department agreed.
“You don’t fully realize that maybe not everyone can push those chairs and get to where they want to go,” said John Gleason, director of the recreation department.
Since then, the town has installed blue accessibility mats on three beaches: Kalmus, Douses and Keyes Memorial.
Ericson-Taylor also bought an all-terrain walker to walk along the water on beaches with hard-packed sand.
Did it succeed?
This year, four years after her stroke, equipped with a foot orthotic, pool noodles and her old kayak vest, Patty reached a milestone – she could finally swim in the ocean again. The thought of swimming fills her voice with emotion.
“It was awesome. I felt free,” she said, adding that independence has been key to her recovery.
Environmental challenges
Municipalities on Cape Cod would like to offer such liberating experiences to all their residents, but the equipment needed to provide universal access is expensive and often requires extra staff. Add to that the dynamic, endlessly shifting nature of the Cape’s beaches and dunes—and erosion from worsening storms—and the challenges become Sisyphean.
Nevertheless, most towns are doing their best to open their shores to people with disabilities, and plan to keep on trying.
Worth the effort?
“Despite the challenges, it’s well worth the effort,” said Bryan McCormack, coastal processes and hazards specialist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Sea Grant program. “Cape Cod is all about the beaches, and excluding an entire swath of the population from that experience just seems wrong.”
McCormack, who is also part of Barnstable County’s Extension Service, offers technical assistance to towns and other communities seeking to stabilize their beaches and helps them plan for future uses—such as the best place for a beach parking lot—using historical geological data.
Why is the Cape so challenging?
He offered an abbreviated explanation of why, in some cases, the Cape’s beaches are more challenging than those elsewhere, making it difficult to offer and maintain universal access.
“There are many dynamics at play when assessing site suitability for access,” McCormack said. “A few of the major factors are the erosion rates, natural resource areas and tidal ranges. The high erosion rate can make management of access routes and tools very difficult for towns, both in terms of time and resources.”
The seasonal changes—where the beach grows as summer’s calm waves deposit sand, which is then stripped away by winter’s fierce storms—can change the slope of the beach, as well as the grain size of the sediment, McCormack said.
For some areas, this can be a drastic change from sand to mixed gravel, which is more difficult to navigate.
What role does tide play?
“Another factor is the tide range,” McCormack said. “Locations on the south coast of Cape Cod have a tide range of about two feet, while beaches on Cape Cod Bay have a tide range closer to 10 feet.”
Tidal range is the difference in height between high tide and low tide.
“This vertical difference in tide can mean a massive difference horizontally across a beach,” he added, explaining that any structures (including rubber mats) that reach the water at high tide could be very far away from the water’s edge at low tide, with highly saturated sediments in between.
Impact of erosion
Joshua K. Wrigley, Falmouth’s newly-hired coastal resilience specialist, agreed with McCormack that the Cape’s dynamic coastline—which makes the beaches irresistible places to play—also means towns must cope with erosion every year.
“Tidally influenced beaches are frequently subject to storm surge events and coastal erosion that damages existing infrastructure such as stairs, paths and railings,” Wrigley said.
What is scarping?
And a phenomenon known as “scarping” can occur, during which intense wave energy causes a sudden drop in elevation in places that were previously gently sloped and accessible.
To make a slope more gradual means excavating portions of the dune.
“That would then compromise other landward areas as they become more vulnerable to new flood pathways,” Wrigley said. “These activities are regulated, as well, under state and municipal laws.”
What about climate change?
The environmental challenges are also expected to worsen as climate change chips away at towns’ best intentions.
“Looking into the future, we are expecting sea levels to continue to change at an accelerated rate. We also expect that storms will become more intense. These can lead to new and larger challenges in managing the coastline,” McCormack said.
“This in turn can help guide the proper tools and management to ensure that anyone can safely get to the beach,” he McCormack added.
Continual process
Barbara Schneider, chairwoman of the Falmouth Beach Committee, said the town has done much to provide beach access to all, and will continue to work against the odds to make it even better.
“It’s never going to be easy to get in and out of the water,” Schneider said. “But we’re not going to stop trying and looking at what we can do to improve access to the beaches.”
Getting down to the water
Accessible mats play a role in crossing the sand, at times fighting directly with the coastal environment. Disability rights laws say accessibility mats must reach the average high tide water line. But in Barnstable, as in many other locations, these mats typically stop mid-sand, leaving beach goers with mobility issues far from the water.
While Ericson-Taylor has found some workarounds to reach the water and find a way to swim, she said she – and others with mobility issues – want to move from accessibility mat to beach directly, and not end up stranded in the middle of the sand.
Gleason said the mats stop far from the water for several pragmatic reasons, including beach maintenance processes. He said that the town rakes the beaches every one to two weeks to smooth the surface. If mats crossed the beach, each would need to be unstaked, rolled up, and then unrolled and restaked after each beach raking – and that would require more staff than the town has according to Gleason.
“You can always ask for more [money], but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll receive more,” he said.
Change is possible
Ericson-Taylor’s spouse calls her a woodpecker, referring to the tenacity with which Patty completes her goals. And Ericson-Taylor said she continue to work for change.
“I try to do positive stuff, you know? Not like the poor me, I had a stroke,” she said. “I just keep busy working and being an advocate in the town for people that wanna’ do things in the town that they haven’t been able to do because of their disability.”
Part 5: In our next installment Rolling Over Barriers we look at some of the technology behind the solutions.
Series Summary:
In part one, Getting to the Beach Isn’t Always Easy, we look at the ADA and the overall challenges of accessibility on Cape Cod’s beaches. Click here to read the story and watch the video Barriers to the Beach, Part 1: Getting to the Beach Isn’t Always Easy
In part two, Sandwich Boardwalk – a Success Story (Mostly) we look at the successful re-imagining of the iconic Sandwich Boardwalk, originally built in 1875, into an ADA compliant pathway. Click here to read the story and watch the video Barriers to the Beach, Part 2: Sandwich Boardwalk – A Success Story (Mostly)
In part three, Rules of the Accessibility Road, we look at the laws and regulations guiding accessibility, speaking with legal experts, and find out how the Town of Dennis created a structure to fund on-going universal access costs. Click here to read the story and watch the video Barriers to the Beach, Part 3: Rules of the Accessibility Road.
In part four, Where Waves Meet Reality, we look at some of the specific challenges of universal access in a constantly changing coastline. Click here to read the story and watch the video Barriers to the Beach, Part 4: Where Waves Meet Reality.
In part five, Rolling Over Barriers, we learn about technology solutions for crossing the sand. Click here to read the story and watch the video Barriers to the Beach, Part 5: Rolling Over Barriers.
