Outdoor Accessibility Guidance

Guidance for creating inclusive outdoor spaces.

This guide helps you make paths and outdoor spaces easier for everyone to use and enjoy. It is an essential resource for land managers, community groups and professionals.

We collaborated with Sensory Trust to review and develop this detailed guide.

The Outdoor Accessibility Guidance gives you practical advice and clear steps to help you develop inclusive outdoor spaces.

Download the PDF to access:

• Detailed guidance on creating accessible paths, routes, and surfaces.
• Standards for facilities including seating, toilets, and parking.
• Advice about inclusive communication and wayfinding.
• Tools for doing access reviews.
• Technical specifications for bridges, gates, gradients, and more.
• Guidance for planning inclusive activities and events.
• Legal framework information related to the Equality Act 2010.
• How to address both physical and social barriers to outdoor access.
• Case studies showing successful inclusive approaches.

We updated our brand and name in June 2025 to Walking Scotland. We’re still working to update everything with our new branding. This means you might spot our previous, Paths for All, branding in places, and some links in downloads might not work as they should.

If you have any problems, let us know and we’ll help as best we can. You can also sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know when we publish updated and new resources and guides.

Date published: April 2023

Format: PDF