Nature Engagement

The active, lived practice of spending time in and interacting with natural environments - walking in parks, gardening, listening to birdsong, touching plants, sitting by water, and similar embodied encounters. Nature engagement extends beyond physical presence to multisensory, affective, and social dimensions and is associated with stress reduction, restoration, and identity formation. For blind and low vision people, nature engagement is shaped by safety constraints, reliance on sighted companions, the dominance of vision-centric outdoor signage, and the limited situational cues available for spontaneous exploration; designing for inclusive nature engagement is an emerging accessibility concern.