Here on Cape Cod we have an aging population ... We really need to think about what we can do to push forward ... Everyone in this world will have some sort of disability by the time they leave it.
— Patrick Phipps, Harwich Resident
Barriers to the Beach, Part 1: Getting to the Beach Isn’t Always Easy
What does 35 years of ADA look like on Cape Cod beaches?
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Barriers to the Beach:
A 5-part collaborative reporting series
Do beaches have barriers?
18 July, 2025 – CAPE COD, MA – Cape Cod’s beaches are its prize jewels – but cliffs, dunes, erosion, tides, and endlessly shifting sands create universal access challenges. As the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) turns 35 in July 2025, reporters from Cape Cod News.org and The Enterprise collaborated to explore just how accessible public beaches are, and aren’t – and what is being done to improve access for all.
In this first installment of Barriers To The Beach, we interview experts to learn more about the challenges and promises when universal accessibility meets the challenging coastline.
Why is there a need for universal access to public beaches?
18 July 2025 – CAPE COD, MA – Patrick Phipps still lives in the same house he grew up in on a quiet street in East Harwich, surrounded by freshwater beaches and childhood memories.
“Me and my friends would swim all the way to the other side,” said Phipps looking over the calm waters of a private neighborhood pond, owned by the local home owners’ association, on a steamy July afternoon.
“They would put me up in a wheelie and they would get me down all the humps and lumps down to the beach, and we would even drag my wheelchair through the water. That was back when I was a kid. I’m not exactly doing that anymore.”
Today Phipps is 29 years old and has not had a beach day in a decade. Without a stabilizing boardwalk or an accessible beach mat traversing the sand all the way to the high tide water line, as dictated by the law, he can’t even dip his toes in the water. Where the mobility mats end so too do Phipps’ attempts to reach the water – because his wheelchair would immediately get stuck in the sand. For him – and the many others experiencing mobility issues – barriers to the beach define going to the beach.
Who needs universal access?
Across this five part series, we are look at those barriers as well as the challenges and solutions to crossing them. While Phipps sees that towns have made some efforts to increase public beaches accessibly, he says he usually ends up stranded in the middle of the beach on a boardwalk that ends too far from the water line, in the scorching sun. And he’s not alone.
More than one in four Americans between the ages of 18 and 65 has a disability according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 20,000 people between 18 and 64 living year round on Cape Cod have a registered disability, as well as some portion of the yearly visitors. Between ages 65-74 the numbers increase. In fact, the CDC says as many as one in eight Americans have a mobility issues.
According to the Cape Cod Commission’s Data Cape Cod, 41.8 percent of Cape Codders are 60 or older. A full 60.8 percent are older than 45. In some towns, that percentage rises even higher. As we age, accessibility often becomes more of a necessity than a luxury, sidelining people to beach parking lots instead of strolling in the sand because the surfaces become too difficult, painful, or dangerous to navigate.
What difference did the ADA make?
Infrastructure improvements brought about the the ADA’s demand for access impact everyone. Have you ever used an electric button to open a door? Have you ever pushed a stroller or steered a bike down a smooth curb cut? Have you ever used a handicapped bathroom staff for its grip bars or space to turn around in? Have you ever held on to the railing while going up and down a staircase? While those solutions literally make access possible for people with mobility challenges, they also benefit everyone else as well.
“We are living in a very advanced time, and we need to think about it,” said Phipps. “We really need to think about what we can do to push forward because we’re going have generations that probably live to 120 years old in the next 50 years. And so, if we’re living these full lives, we are going to encounter disability. Everyone in this world, will have some sort of disability by the time they leave it.”
What does this mean for beach access?
Under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Every American has the right to access public spaces and services. Local towns, the National Seashore and state parks must all offer people a way to enjoy that right on public beaches, as well. However the exact interpretation of law into on-the-ground reality can vary. What does access mean? What does enjoy mean?
In addition, while the ADA has made improved the state of many public beaches, privately owned beaches, such as Phipps’ childhood pond beach which is owned by a home owners’ association, have exemptions that public beaches do not. Between public beaches struggling to comply and private beaches holding exemptions, when it comes to a day on Cape Cod’s shores the ADA has helped some, but has not come close to creating the dream of universal access.
Phipps, a long-time advocate for disability rights, says he not only has he given up going to beaches but he also given up on advocating for beach accessibility even for himself. Beach days are not a part of his life anymore.
When did the ADA become law?
President George H. W. Bush signed the ADA into law on July 26, 1990. This summer marks the legislation’s 35th anniversary.
Proponents conceived of ADA as a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. Its roots lie in a 1986 report from what was then called the National Council on the Handicapped. Toward Independence recommended a comprehensive equal opportunities law.
Two years later, in 1988, Sen. Lowell Weicker (R-CT) and Sen. Tom Hawkin (D-IA) introduced the bill to the Senate. That bill became the blueprint for ADA. Tony Coelho (D-CA) and Silvio Conte (R-MA) introduced it in the House. An additional two years later, in 1990, the revised bill became law.
Why does beach access matter?
In this first installment Barriers to the Beach, we started out asking a simple question to Cathy Taylor, Director of Services at Cape Organization for Rights of the Disabled (CORD): Why should a public beach be accessible?
“Why shouldn’t it?” she responded succinctly.
“Everyone else gets to go. Why should a person in a wheelchair not be able to go? It’s not like this can’t be done. It can be done. There is no reason in this day and age why people can’t go out on the beaches.”
Cape Cod’s beaches reach like a strand of pearls across Cape Cod Bay to the north, stretching out into the Atlantic Ocean and back through Nantucket Sound in the south. They shape the region’s culture and form part of its core identity. They also drive its economy. The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce reported that 5.5 million people visited Cape in 2024, and during those visits, domestic tourists spend $1.3 billion annually. Beaches and and access to them provide an economic boost like little else.
However, when the water lies out of reach for would-be-beach-goers, residents and visitors alike miss out on a key part of what makes Cape Cod, well, Cape Cod.
Who is impacted?
Clearly accessibility gaps impact people like Phipps, for whom the beach represents both a joyful memory and a frustrating current reality. It includes people like Brewster sisters Meg and Sharon Donohue. Their close proximity to the salt water and bike trails should be enough for Meg, who uses a wheelchair and a walker, to access the activities she loves the most: swimming and biking – but Sharon is physically unable to help Meg reach the water on their saltwater beaches. It includes Cathy Taylor’s parents-in-law who came to live with her and her husband during the pandemic. Her father-in-law needed a walker and her mother-in-law was unstable on uneven surfaces. They spent their beach days on the parking lot.
Those using mobility equipment – walker, crutches or wheelchair – say traversing the sands can literally be impossible. Folks with joint inflammation – such as arthritis – share that walking on sand creates pain and its own barrier to access. Amputees such as war veterans may find it difficult to walk on sand. People with a broken leg, surgery, or badly twisted ankle – express surprise how difficult “going to the beach” suddenly becomes. And while people with little ones in a stroller or a beach wagon find workarounds to cross the sand, they too face access challenges.
The solutions that help ensure access can be complex, may need some effort, creativity and money – and even well-intentioned efforts come with gaps. For example, board walks and accessibility beach mats that end mid-sand, causing their users to only look at the water from afar. In our coming reporting we look at what beach owners such as towns, the National Seashore and state parks are doing to accommodate everyone who wants to visit their beaches, what is missing and any challenges that may face the people working towards accessibility.
How does universal accessibility change communities?
By excluding a part of the population from services and places, local communities experience ripple effects that they may not expect.
“If you can’t get into a restaurant, you’re not going to spend your money there. If you can’t get into a store, you’re not going to spend your money there either,” explained CORD’s Taylor.
“Towns are impacted because if people can’t spend their money, they’re not paying taxes and they’re not getting the tax dollars, or people aren’t going to move to that town because it’s inaccessible,” she said.
How large is the beach challenge?
Cape Cod encompasses more than 194 public saltwater beaches, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Many of the 890 ponds also have public beaches.
That means the ADA in theory applies to all public beaches across Cape Cod’s approximately 560 miles of coastline and 11,000 acres of ponds and lakes – we have set out to find out if there are any beaches on Cape Cod that are fully compliant with disability rights, laws and regulations.
There are solutions to beach accessibility and over the years companies have produced better technical equipment, some of which we explore in our upcoming installments. So how come many beaches still lack full access? And how do local government communicate existing access to their beach-goers? We also look at the laws, regulations and what is considered good praxis in the third installment where we talk to legal experts and local town commissions on disabilities to explore what unique challenges Cape Cod’s rural and coastal environment may pose.
Phipps says if just one beach on the Cape were fully accessible, where he could reach the beach mat or boardwalk from an accessible parking space, where he roll his wheelchair onto the mat that went all the way to the high tide water line so he could get into the water, and where he could sit with his friends and family – that one beach would be enough for him.
“Yeah, I would go to that beach. I would go there all the time,” he said.
Part 2: In our next installment Barriers to the Beach, Part 2: Sandwich Boardwalk – A Success Story (Mostly) we look at one success story, the building of a fully accessible boardwalk.
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, Where Waves Meet Reality, 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.
