A New Jersey mom is fighting to get easy beach access for beachgoers who are disabled.
Jessica Krill started the nonprofit “Beach Days for All,” an organization designed to urge New Jersey shore towns to provide fully integrated beaches for the disabled.
“I’d like to see all towns in New Jersey have one fully handicapped accessible beach,” Krill says. “And when I say that, I mean the wheelchairs, the reclining wheelchairs, the surf riders.”
Parents of disabled children say that it can often be difficult to get their children onto the beach and toward the ocean.
“We have to carry her, and it’s getting harder,” says Toms River mother Kristi Huff, whose 7-year-old daughter Lilly is disabled. “I can’t go to the beach by myself with her.”
Krill’s organization has already had five special wheelchairs donated to the cause, including the kind that can go into the water. She would also like to see towns extend beach mats onto the beach.
The wheelchairs and beach mats would be for all visitors with disabilities, not just children, according to Krill.
The group is working with different beach towns individually. They say that they hope to have the first fully accessible beach set up in Seaside Park before the end of the summer.