Outdoors For Everyone

According to studies done by the Pennsylvania State University for the Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP), approximately 15 percent of adult residents of Pennsylvania have some sort of disability and these disabilities can limit outdoor recreation participation. That’s roughly 1.6 million residents of Pennsylvania who are limited to activity due to a disability (US Census data).

Pennsylvania’s people are more diverse and their life experiences more urban than a decade ago. Simultaneously, we have an aging population. There’s a need to improve public access to outdoors, provide better and more centralized recreation information, and encourage and accommodate outdoor users.

Enter “The Outdoors for Everyone,” a program of removing barriers to participation in outdoor recreation. PPFF is dedicated to helping you find your outdoor confidence, whether it’s through a skill-building video or workshop, through installation of an accessible boat launch or fishing dock, through funding of equipment or transportation that gives you the chance to try something new, or the translation of signage and information that makes everyone welcome in any language.

The latest (2025) amenity (made possible through a grant from AARP and provided by EnChroma.

If you’re red-green color blind, you can try EnChroma glasses for color blindness and experience the vibrant colors of every season at Black Moshannon State Park. You can borrow and enjoy EnChroma glasses during your visit as part of our mission to ensure a place and an experience for everyone in Pennsylvania’s state parks and forests. EnChroma glasses enable people with red-green color blindness to see an expanded range of clear, vibrant, distinct color and enjoy enhanced detail and depth perception.

Color blindness affects one in 12 men (8%) and one in 200 women (.5%) – an estimated 13 million in the US and 350 million worldwide.
Take EnChroma’s online color vision test to learn your type and level of color blindness by clicking here. Then, bring color blind family and friends to Black Moshannon to borrow the glasses.

Causes and Challenges of Color Blindness
While people with normal color vision see over one million shades of color, those with color vision deficiency only see about 10% those hues and shades. As a result, their world view is dull and less vibrant, with some colors appearing muddled, muted, washed out or indistinguishable. To them, purple looks blue, red seems brown, gray appears pink, and green and yellow can look similar.
The color blind can struggle to see the red in a flower, the variation of colors in a rainbow, a painting, the true hair or eye color of a loved one, red and green stoplights and more. In viewing artwork, the color blind may struggle to see some colors. In school, the condition can cause frustration and challenges in learning. Here are two examples of how the color blind see:

How EnChroma Glasses Work
EnChroma’s patented lenses are engineered with special optical filters that enable the color blind to see a broader range of colors more clearly, vibrantly and distinctly so they can experience colorful art, the beauty of nature, overcome everyday challenges and better understand and appreciate colors. Importantly, EnChroma glasses are not a cure or correction for color blindness, they work for approximately eight out of 10 people with red-green color blindness, do not provide full color vision and results and reaction times vary.

As shown on our map below, borrow a pair of EnChroma glasses on your next visit to Black Moshannon – and be sure to take advantage of the other accessibility options across the system!