Members of the City of Prince George’s Accessibility Committee, staff from Spinal Cord Injury BC and City Staff at Ginter’s Park Thursday afternoon – photo 250News

Prince George, B.C. – The City of Prince George is becoming more and more accessible.

Members of the City’s Accessibility Committee, City Staff and staff from Spinal Cord Injury BC gathered at Ginter’s Park to celebrate that progress this afternoon.

“We wanted to bring everybody here today because we wanted to talk about how paving this trail (roughly 2.5 km) has made this park more accessible and inclusive for people of all ages and abilities,” said Hillary Morgan, a City planner and staff liaison to the City’s Accessibility Committee.

“I’m really pleased,” added Pat Harris, resource centre manager for Spinal Cord Injury BC. “The City over the last couple years has really embraced the idea of universal design and improving accessibility for people with disabilities and other mobility challenges.”

City Councillor Jillian Merrick also noted some advancements in other areas.

“There are so many places you go whether it’s recreation, access to facilities, whether it’s programming, things like our new website are going to be easily readable by software that helps people with their visual impairment.”

But she said there’s still work to be done, for example eliminating the steps into the entrances into some of the older buildings downtown.

“There’s not been a lot of headway in eliminating those steps.” But Merrick added there is a possible solution.

“I’m hoping NDIT will work with us because they have their façade program. So if we can attach accessibility to that I think we’d see a major improvement.”