I’m pleased to share that my latest paper has now been published open access in Ocean and Society:
“Reconfiguring Coastal Access: Disability, Relational Participation, and Politics of Inclusion in Blue Growth Futures”
You can read the full paper here:
https://doi.org/10.17645/oas.12343
The article forms part of the special issue “Empowerment and Blue Justice in Coastal Communities” and brings disability studies into conversation with debates around coastal governance, blue justice and the future of our coasts.
Access Is More Than Being Allowed to Be There
One of the central arguments in the paper is that there is an important difference between a place being technically or legally accessible and someone being able to participate there meaningfully.
A coastline may be publicly open. A path may exist. A consultation may be described as inclusive.
But that does not necessarily mean someone can get there, navigate the space, enter the water, understand what to expect, participate in the way they want to, and return home.
My research with visually impaired people repeatedly showed that access depended on many things working together: transport, guides, environmental familiarity, information, shoreline conditions, organisational flexibility, trust and support.
Access was therefore not something that people simply had or did not have.
It was something continually produced through relationships between people, places, infrastructures and environmental conditions.
The Work That Happens Before Reaching the Water
One of the strongest themes in the research was how much work can happen before someone even reaches the shoreline.
People described organising transport, finding guides, working out where entrances were, understanding gradients and surfaces, checking environmental conditions, arranging equipment and negotiating with organisations.
As one swimmer put it:
“The swimming is the easy part. The hard part is everything before it.”
That line captures something important.
When access is discussed only in terms of what happens at the beach or water’s edge, much of the labour required to participate disappears from view.
The paper describes these wider networks of transport, people, information, infrastructure and support as relational infrastructures.
They are often what make participation possible.
Independence Does Not Have to Mean Doing Everything Alone
Another important part of the paper challenges the assumption that independence means needing no support from other people.
The swimmers I spent time with described guiding relationships that were collaborative, responsive and highly skilled.
Guides used voice, touch, pacing and environmental information. Swimmers brought their own knowledge, preferences, experience and judgement. Both adjusted continually to the water and to one another.
Support did not necessarily reduce autonomy.
In many cases, it was what made autonomy possible.
This matters because accessibility is still sometimes approached as though the ideal outcome is for a disabled person to become completely independent of other people.
The research suggests something different: interdependence can be an ordinary condition of participation rather than evidence that participation has somehow failed.
Risk, Choice and the Right to Decide
The paper also looks closely at risk.
The visually impaired swimmers involved in the research did not expect blue spaces to be risk-free. They talked openly about waves, tides, weeds, cold, currents, changing weather and unfamiliar environments.
What they often resisted was having risk interpreted for them in ways that removed their ability to make their own decisions.
Several people described clubs, organisations or activities where concerns about liability resulted in additional restrictions, costs or assumptions about what they should or should not be allowed to do.
This raises a wider question:
Who gets to decide what an acceptable level of risk looks like?
Participants demonstrated considerable environmental knowledge and made ongoing judgements about conditions, support and their own bodies.
The issue was therefore not about removing risk altogether, but about creating conditions in which people could negotiate it with appropriate information and support.
The Coast Is Not Just the Background
The sea itself also matters.
Tides, waves, wind, sound, shingle, sand, gradients, pollution and temperature all changed what became possible from one visit to the next.
For some visually impaired swimmers, sound was particularly important for orientation.
One person described standing still and listening to the waves before entering the sea, using changes in sound to understand what the water was doing.
These encounters remind us that coastal access cannot be designed as though the environment is fixed.
A route that works at one tide may not work at another.
A familiar beach can become very different after weather, erosion or changes in shoreline material.
The coast is therefore not simply the setting in which access happens. It actively participates in shaping what people can do.
Disability as Expertise
Perhaps the most important argument in the paper is that disabled people should not be understood only as people who need to be accommodated.
Their experiences can reveal things about environments that might otherwise remain unnoticed.
The visually impaired people involved in this research had detailed knowledge of sound, shoreline conditions, water quality, changing weather, gradients, movement and risk.
Their experiences made visible — and sometimes audible — the assumptions built into environments designed around particular ways of seeing, moving and participating.
That knowledge has value for coastal planning, environmental management and the design of future blue spaces.
Disabled people therefore need to be involved not simply as consultees at the end of a project, but as people whose knowledge can shape what is imagined and designed from the beginning.
Rethinking Blue Justice
Much of the existing discussion around blue justice focuses on questions such as who benefits from marine development, whose livelihoods are protected, whose voices are represented and how ocean resources are distributed.
Those questions remain crucial.
This paper adds another:
What conditions actually allow people to participate in coastal life?
Justice at the coast is not only about whether people have formal access to a space.
It is also about whether they can arrive, orient themselves, participate, remain there and return home in ways that are meaningful to them.
That requires us to think beyond isolated adjustments and towards the relationships between transport, infrastructure, information, people, organisations and changing environmental conditions.
For me, that is where some of the most important conversations about accessible blue space now need to go.
I remain enormously grateful to the visually impaired people who shared their time, knowledge and experiences with me, and to the organisations and communities that continue to support this research.
Rockliffe, S. (2026). Reconfiguring Coastal Access: Disability, Relational Participation, and Politics of Inclusion in Blue Growth Futures. Ocean and Society, 3, Article 12343.
https://doi.org/10.17645/oas.12343
