The numbers tell a stark story. Perceived availability of sports facilities or adequate spaces near the home was 92.1 percent among adults with disabilities and 91.4 percent among those without, a difference so small it vanished statistically (crude prevalence ratio 1.01; 95 percent CI 0.99 to 1.03; p = 0.478). But when the researchers asked who actually used those available spaces, the picture inverted. Only 29.9 percent of adults with disabilities who had spaces nearby reported using them, compared with 42.7 percent of adults without disabilities. That translates into a 22 percent higher prevalence of non-use among people with disabilities, a gap that persisted even after the researchers adjusted for sex, age group and socioeconomic status.

The study, published in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, is the first to separate perceived availability from actual use along the full access chain in a national surveillance instrument, and it does so with unusual methodological care. The team classified disability into six mutually exclusive categories: sensory only, physical only, cognitive only, multiple types, other only, and none. They then used weighted Poisson regression with robust variance to estimate prevalence ratios, adjusting for confounders selected a priori through a directed acyclic graph rather than by statistical fishing. Because the public database provided survey weights but not stratum or cluster identifiers, the researchers approximated variance using a Kish design effect of 2.51, and they confirmed that their conclusions held when they recomputed key contrasts under design effects ranging from 2.0 to 3.0.

The weighted prevalence of disability in the sample was 9.3 percent, with sensory disability alone accounting for 57.4 percent of the group with disabilities, followed by physical only at 28.6 percent. Adults with disabilities were older (45.0 percent aged 60 or older, versus 19.7 percent of those without), more frequently women (55.8 percent versus 50.5 percent), and more frequently of low socioeconomic status (38.7 percent versus 31.0 percent). These demographic differences matter because they partially explain the crude inactivity gap: 40.5 percent of adults with disabilities were physically inactive compared with 27.0 percent of those without, a raw difference of roughly 13.5 percentage points that narrowed to a prevalence ratio of 1.22 after adjustment. The persistence of that association after controlling for demographics indicates a disability-specific disadvantage beyond age structure alone.

What makes the finding actionable is the barrier profile among non-users. Among the 634 adults with disabilities and 3,635 without who reported having available spaces but not using them, three barriers stood out as significantly more frequent in the disability group. Distance or difficulty of access was reported by 14.0 percent versus 7.7 percent (prevalence ratio 1.82; 95 percent CI 1.44 to 2.31). Lack of companionship was reported by 25.9 percent versus 16.8 percent (PR 1.54; 1.31 to 1.80). Presence of crime was reported by 26.4 percent versus 21.4 percent (PR 1.23; 1.06 to 1.44). Inadequate lighting was borderline (15.3 percent versus 12.2 percent; PR 1.25; p = 0.046). Notably, complaints about poor maintenance were actually less frequent among adults with disabilities (19.2 percent versus 23.5 percent; PR 0.82), which the authors interpret as evidence that the excess is not driven by a uniformly more negative perception of the environment but concentrates in barriers plausibly related to functional limitations: getting to the space and having support once there.

The heterogeneity across disability types adds another layer. Adults reporting multiple disability types showed the strongest association with non-use of available spaces (adjusted PR 1.47; 1.35 to 1.60), followed by cognitive only (1.29; 1.00 to 1.67), other only (1.20; 1.01 to 1.43), physical only (1.14; 1.05 to 1.24) and sensory only (1.09; 1.02 to 1.17). This ordering mirrors international evidence: among Spanish users of adapted sport programs, environmental barriers predominated in visual disability while intrinsic barriers predominated in physical and intellectual disability. The pattern is consistent with the global estimate that people with disabilities are 16 to 62 percent less likely to meet physical activity guidelines, a range that reflects precisely this heterogeneity across disability types and contexts.

The stratified analyses reveal a striking sex pattern. Disability appears to erase the male advantage in physical activity observed in the general population: men without disabilities were substantially more active than women without disabilities, but inactivity among adults with disabilities converged near 40 percent in both sexes. The interaction between disability and sex for inactivity was statistically significant (p = 0.009), with the crude prevalence ratio reaching 1.78 among men compared with 1.30 among women. Barrier profiles also diverged by group: lack of companionship weighed most heavily among adults aged 60 and over (30.5 percent versus 19.4 percent) and among men (27.7 percent versus 14.2 percent), while presence of crime was differential only among women (30.9 percent versus 24.3 percent). Distance or difficult access was elevated in nearly every stratum examined.

The policy implications are direct. Chile’s newly enacted National Policy on Physical Activity and Sport 2026-2037 acknowledges that 79.3 percent of persons with disabilities engage in no physical activity, citing the national disability survey, but delegates its quantified targets to forthcoming national and regional plans. The present findings suggest that building more infrastructure would not by itself close the gap, since perceived availability is already near universal in both groups. Instead, the actionable margins are accessibility audits and universal design retrofitting of existing spaces, safe route programs connecting homes to spaces, and accompanied or peer-supported physical activity schemes that directly target the three differential barriers identified. The authors also point to a comparatively low-cost complement: training physical education teachers, sport coaches and municipal staff in inclusive and adapted physical activity, so that existing spaces are staffed by professionals prepared to receive people with disabilities.

The study has limitations that the authors acknowledge candidly. Disability was self-reported through a brief dichotomous item battery without severity grading or use of the standardized Washington Group questions, which likely captures more severe cases; the 9.3 percent prevalence sits closer to the severe fraction of the III National Disability Study (ENDISC 2022), which estimates 17.6 percent of Chilean adults live with some degree of disability. The cognitive only group was small (n = 45), yielding wide confidence intervals. The residual

Subject of Research: Disability and use of physical activity spaces in Chilean adults

Article Title: Similar perceived availability but lower use of physical activity spaces among Chilean adults with disabilities

Article References: De Souza-Lima, J., Winckler, C., Olasagasti-Ibargoien, J., Yáñez-Sepúlveda, R., Godoy-Tapia, C., Parra-Saldías, M., Duclos-Bastías, D., Godoy-Cumillaf, A., Merellano-Navarro, E., Bruneau-Chávez, J., Reyes-Amigo, T., & Farías-Valenzuela, C. (2026). Similar perceived availability but lower use of physical activity spaces among Chilean adults with disabilities. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 8, Article 1969080. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2026.1969080

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fspor.2026.1969080

Keywords: physical activity, disability, Chile, built environment, accessibility, national survey, ENAFyD, public health, health equity, barriers, inclusive policy, Similar

The setting could hardly be more climatically exposed. Ghana’s Upper West Region, which borders Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, sits in the Guinea Savannah zone, where unimodal rainfall averaging around 115 centimetres falls between April and September, and the dry season brings dust-laden harmattan winds from the Sahara. Ghana has already warmed by roughly one degree Celsius since 1960, and projections suggest mean annual temperatures could rise by a further one to three degrees by 2050, with the frequency of hot days and nights increasing by 16 to 57 percent by mid-century. For a region where nearly all households depend on rain-fed cultivation of millet, maize, groundnuts, and guinea corn, these shifts translate directly into failed harvests, water scarcity, and hunger.

What the new research makes clear is that these hazards do not land evenly. Of the region’s roughly 900,000 inhabitants, about six percent live with some form of disability, and in the Nadowli Kaleo District, where the study was conducted, prevalence reaches 4.8 percent. The socio-economic profile of the survey respondents is stark: eighty percent were unemployed, a quarter had no formal education, and roughly ninety percent lived in households earning less than 500 Ghanaian cedis per month, equivalent to about 42 US dollars. This is the economic terrain on which drought, extreme heat, and flooding arrive, and it is a terrain that leaves almost no margin for recovery.

The reported impacts were sweeping. Ninety-four percent of respondents said that drought, extreme heat, and flooding affected their daily activities, and every single participant reported some form of emotional distress, worry, or sadness tied to environmental change. In the longer term, 96.2 percent reported water- and food-related illnesses, 90.5 percent reported increased hunger and poor nutrition, 89.5 percent reported pest-related diseases, and 84.8 percent reported displacement. Heat-related illness or discomfort was the most commonly cited immediate health effect, reported by roughly four in five respondents across all disability categories. One participant with a physical disability described the mechanism plainly: when the weather turns very hot, moving around, working, and getting help all become harder, precisely when survival demands them most.

Crucially, the study shows that vulnerability is not uniform within the disabled population, challenging the tendency of climate research to treat marginalised groups as undifferentiated blocks. Perceptions of who suffers most differed significantly across disability categories. Among respondents with cognitive or intellectual disabilities, 84 percent said persons with disabilities were more affected by climate change than others, as did 82.6 percent of those with physical disabilities, but only 30.8 percent of those with sensory or other disabilities, who more often identified low-income households as the hardest hit. Self-reported climate knowledge also varied significantly, with respondents who have sensory disabilities reporting lower levels of knowledge, a gap the researchers link to communication barriers in how warnings and weather information are disseminated.

This information gap is where the study’s environmental justice framework becomes sharpest. The authors analyse their findings through four dimensions of justice: distributive, concerning who bears the burdens; procedural, concerning who participates in decisions; recognitional, concerning whose needs and identities are acknowledged; and capabilities-based, concerning whether people possess the substantive freedoms to act. When climate information arrives only through written notices, public announcements, or other non-inclusive formats, people with visual, hearing, or cognitive impairments are systematically excluded from the knowledge that determines preparedness. A key informant from the community development department confirmed that access to climate information is not the same for all disability groups, with communication and sensory limitations creating additional barriers to receiving warnings about weather conditions and risks.

Yet the research also documents agency, not just victimhood. Between 81 and 95 percent of respondents across disability categories reported taking some form of adaptive action. The most common strategies were reliance on family and friends, cited by 39.1 percent, livelihood diversification, cited by 21 percent, support from government and external organisations, also 21 percent, and crop diversification, cited by 10.5 percent. Respondents described pivoting from farming alone into petty trading and casual work so that a failed harvest would not mean total destitution. These patterns, the authors argue, dismantle assumptions of passivity: people with disabilities are actively managing climatic uncertainty, even under conditions of poverty that would overwhelm most households.

But agency has limits when the structures around it remain exclusionary. The most striking statistic in the study may be this: 98.2 percent of respondents expressed dissatisfaction or uncertainty about the adequacy of government and societal efforts to address the needs of persons with disabilities in relation to climate change, and only 1.8 percent were satisfied. Respondents acknowledged that their needs were nominally reflected in disaster preparedness plans, yet 98.1 percent said those plans still required substantial improvement to respond to their circumstances. Ghana’s National Climate Change Policy formally commits to inclusive participation, but the gap between paper commitments and accessible implementation, the researchers find, encompasses failures of procedural and recognitional justice as much as distributive ones.

The theoretical weight of the study rests on the social model of disability, which holds that disability is constructed not by impairment itself but by institutional barriers, inaccessible infrastructure, and exclusionary practices. Read through this lens, the climate vulnerability of the respondents is not an inevitable consequence of their bodies or minds; it is manufactured by social systems that fail to accommodate diverse needs in transportation, healthcare, disaster preparedness, and livelihood support. Nearly seventy percent of respondents with physical disabilities reported challenges accessing infrastructural facilities during climatic stress, compared with 46.2 percent of those with sensory or other disabilities and 41.1 percent of those with cognitive or intellectual disabilities, illustrating how mobility and the built environment mediate who can reach water, food, markets, and medical care when conditions deteriorate.

The study’s authors are careful about the limits of their evidence. The sampling frame came from an official register of 1,006 people maintained by the Department of Social Welfare, meaning unregistered individuals, who may be still more vulnerable, were not captured. Some disability categories contained small numbers, so the statistical associations are presented as exploratory patterns rather than causal proof, and the findings reflect self-reported perceptions rather than objectively verified climate impacts. Even with these caveats, the message for policy is unambiguous. Climate adaptation that treats persons with disabilities as a homogeneous, passive block of vulnerability will fail both the science and the people. What is required, the researchers conclude, is disability-inclusive climate governance: accessible and multi-format climate information, meaningful participation of persons with disabilities in adaptation planning, disability-responsive infrastructure, and livelihood support that recognises them not merely as victims of a warming world, but as active agents whose knowledge and adaptive capacities are essential to building a climate future that works for everyone.

Subject of Research: Climate vulnerability and environmental justice among persons with disabilities in Northwest Ghana

Article Title: Climate vulnerability and environmental justice among persons with disabilities in Northwest Ghana

Article References: Aniah, P., Doke, E. T. A., Chrysogonus, A., Amoah, G. A., & Nayaga, P. (2026). Climate vulnerability and environmental justice among persons with disabilities in Northwest Ghana. Discover Global Society, 4(1), Article 213. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00568-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00568-3

Keywords: climate change, disability, environmental justice, climate vulnerability, adaptation, Ghana, sub-Saharan Africa, social model of disability, food insecurity, adaptive capacity, disaster risk management, inclusive policy