A group working to make the beaches on Martha’s Vineyard more accessible to people with disabilities made several recommendations for local officials over the past year, but they say that the response so far has been lacking.
The advocacy group, Beach Within Reach Coalition (BWR), last year sent recommendation letters to 10 of the Islands beach operators recommending a variety of improvements — ranging from providing more access to floating wheelchairs, adding new or upgraded accommodations to make it easier to get to the high-tide mark on beaches, and to provide better access in parking lots.
But, according to the coalition, only three of the 10 beaches have provided plans in response so far.
The coalition has been assessing and reporting on the progress of town, county, and nonprofit beach operators since the end of winter last year. The group said that recommendations were originally given to beach managers to help improve accessibility at 30 of the Island’s public beaches. According to the group, site visits conducted at the end of the 2024 summer season revealed most remain inaccessible.
“Those most affected continue to be individuals with physical and visual disabilities, whether lifelong or acquired,” said Richard Cohen, Dukes County Associate Commissioner for Disabilities.
According to a recent press release from the action group, the recommendations would help Island beaches meet minimum federal and state standards or best practices.
While many of the beach operators they originally contacted haven’t made substantial progress, Cohen isn’t completely surprised.
“We didn’t expect that they would be in full compliance by the summer,” said Cohen. “Even though it was theoretically possible, there were still a lot of low hanging fruit they could have done.”
But he’s hopeful that improvements can be made ahead of this summer.
“They have an obligation to make whatever they can access as soon as possible, and we are anxious to see it get done economically the right way and at least within a reasonable time frame,” Cohen added.
According to the coalition, end of summer reports were sent to all 10 beach operators, but the only two operators to develop actionable plans so far were Oak Bluffs and Dukes County. Oak Bluffs is on schedule to meet its action plan timeline and is the closest of beach operators to meet compliant accessibility.
Aquinnah is one town that hasn’t taken much action to tackle 16 of the recommendations made for its beaches.
Jeffery Madison, Aquinnah town administrator, said the town plans to do their own disability needs assessment this year, with beaches being one of the aspects under consideration.
“We are going to focus on the plans to be implemented, the planning for the necessary upgrades,” said Madison.
Edgartown had 15 recommendations across four beaches all of which remain inaccessible and noncompliant, according to the accessibility coalition.
Regarding South Beach, the coalition said that Edgartown did not prepare a progress report because significant alterations to the beach entrances as well as other areas were made due to erosion and storm damage.
“While the progress report was not prepared, that did not relieve the town from making the beach accessible,” reads the statement from BWR. “In fact, because the town was making significant alterations to the beach, the town was under heightened obligation to make the beach accessible.”
Chilmark, with 15 recommendations across three beaches, made notable progress only at Menemsha, the advocacy group said.Tisbury had 16 recommendations across three beaches and have made progress in a number of items but many are incomplete, the report notes. West Tisbury has a number of outstanding recommendations as does the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, Sheriff’s Meadow and Trustees of Reservations, according to BWR.
“This is not a paper exercise… The purpose of this initiative is to seek compliance with laws and standards that were enacted to overcome a long history of excluding individuals with disabilities and others from community life,” Iris Freeman, a BWR member and Healthy Aging Board member, is quoted in a press release. “Many of these federal and state requirements have been on the books since the 1970s and certainly since 1991, failure to comply perpetuates this long and historic mistreatment of these groups of our fellow citizens and also opens up the towns and other beach operators to legal exposure, at a time when many responsible officials, non-profit leaders and citizens are modelling or promoting the rule of law.”
