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Birdability Week 2020

Birdability Week is a celebration of birders with disabilities and other health concerns, and an opportunity to share resources and ideas to help the birding community be accessible, inclusive and welcoming to everybody and every body!

An annual event held in October and supported by National Audubon, it was inspired by #BlackBirdersWeek, Latino Conservation Week and Let’s Go Birding Together. We’re looking forward to Birdability Week 2021!

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Birdability Week 2020 (held October 19-24) was the beginning of the conversation about how we can make birding more accessible and inclusive for birders who experience accessibility challenges. Supported by National Audubon, Birdability Week 2020 launched Birdability into the national (and international!) conversation about accessibility, inclusivity, equity and diversity in birding and the outdoors.

Online events included:

Release of the Birdability Week Kickoff Video (which received over 18,000 views);
An online panel discussion and webinar (more below);
Social media prompts,
The release of the Birdability Birders Survey; and
A push to encourage more birding locations being added to the Birdability Map.

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A panel discussion, Birdability: Perspectives on Access from the Field, shared stories from six birders who experience accessibility challenges, what these birders need from able-bodied/sighted/neurotypical/hearing birders to feel included and welcomed in the birding community, and ideas for organizing accessible bird outings.

More than 250 people tuned in via Zoom, and the recording has been viewed more than 11,500 times on the National Audubon Facebook page.

Birdability founder Virginia Rose presented a webinar, Birdability: Access for Everybody, about her own experiences as a birder who uses a wheelchair, and what birding has brought to her life. She shared the story of how Birdability began, as well as ways to implement accessible and inclusive bird outings in your community.

More than 200 people attended live on Zoom, and the recording on the National Audubon Facebook page has been watched over 12,700 times.

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Because of Birdability Week…

We were contacted by folks from as far away as Poland, Australia and Argentina, who wanted to help support Birdability and share our work in their communities.
Rogue Birders designed a t-shirt and hoodie inspired by a quote from blind birder Jerry Berrier during the panel discussion, with all funds raised going to support Birdability.
Our partnership with Georgia Audubon holding monthly virtual accessible bird outings began.
The level of engagement, interest and importance for this work became so strongly apparent that Birdability became a registered non-profit (with the support of our founding sponsor Travis Audubon) to sustainably continue this work!

We’re looking forward to Birdability Week 2021!

As well as free, online, accessible events, we hope to encourage and celebrate accessible and inclusive bird outings being held across North America (and the world!) during the month of October (pending the Covid-19 situation).

If you’d like to start planning for your Audubon chapter, bird club or nature-based organization to get involved with this, start by reading our Steps to Implement Accessible and Inclusive Bird Outings. Once your outing is planned, please contact us so we can add it to our Birdability Month calendar to help celebrate your work to ensure that birding truly is for everybody and every body! And sign up below to keep up to date about all things Birdability!

If you or your organization found this information helpful for your own work or programs, please consider donating to support our work in creating these resources. Thank you!