An Only Everywhere Report
What 400 California Attractions Tell Disabled Visitors (and What They Don’t)
July 2026 · A directory-wide audit of published accessibility information
More than half of California’s major attractions, 51% of the 400 venues we audited, have no dedicated accessibility page on their website.
No page that tells a wheelchair user whether they can get in the door, a deaf visitor whether a show is captioned, or an autistic traveler what the noise level will be like.
Among the venues that do publish an accessibility page, the information is thin. 45% of them say nothing at all for deaf or blind visitors. Just 13% cover all four categories of access: mobility, hearing, vision, and sensory & cognitive. Across the full dataset, that number falls to 7%.
For millions of disabled Californians and visitors (one in four American adults has a disability, per the CDC), planning a simple day out means calling venues one by one, hunting through FAQ pages, or gambling on arrival.
Key Findings
What We Did
Only Everywhere is an accessibility-focused travel directory covering the Los Angeles area, the San Francisco Bay Area, Orange County, and Palm Springs area. To build it, we individually researched the published accessibility information of 400 museums, parks, theaters, stadiums, landmarks, beaches, and attractions (venue websites, accessibility pages, FAQ sections, and other public sources) and mapped what we found onto a standardized framework of 32 accessibility features across four dimensions of access (mobility, hearing, vision, and sensory and cognitive) plus support services. These four dimensions follow the framework the UN World Tourism Organization uses to define accessible tourism (Recommendations on Accessible Tourism, 2013).
A note on method. This is an audit of what venues tell the public, not a physical inspection. A venue may well have an assistive listening system it never mentions online. That is precisely the problem: an accommodation nobody can find might as well not exist. Disabled travelers plan around published information.
Finding 1: Accessibility Still Means Ramps
Venues have largely learned to document mobility access, and stopped there.
One in four venues (25%) documents mobility accommodations and nothing whatsoever for hearing, vision, or sensory and cognitive needs. The ADA is 36 years old this month; its legacy online is ramps and accessible restrooms, with the other disability communities left to guess.
Finding 2: The Sensory Numbers Collapse Under Inspection
45% of venues document something sensory-related, but the bulk of that is soft information like less-crowded visiting times. Count only concrete provisions (quiet zones, sensory bags, sensory guides, social stories) and the figure collapses.
The venues where sensory load matters most do worst. Of the theaters, concert halls, and stadiums in our dataset (the loudest, most crowded venues in California), only 4 to 6 in each category document any sensory provision beyond crowd timing.
Finding 3: Some Accommodations Are Nearly Extinct Online
Across all 400 venues, spanning four major California travel regions, a handful of accommodations have all but vanished from the public web:
That last number deserves a sentence of its own: in the entire Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orange County, and Palm Springs dataset, we found three venues that tell the public they have an adult changing station, a facility without which many people with significant disabilities simply cannot leave home for a full day.
Finding 4: The Accessibility Page Is the Tell
The single strongest predictor of good accessibility information is whether the venue bothered to build a page for it. Venues with a dedicated page document 6.0 features on average, more than double the 2.6 at venues without one.
Every one of the twelve best-documented venues in our audit has a dedicated page. The fix is not construction: it is communication.
Finding 5: No Region Wins
No region wins. San Francisco leads on sensory documentation (52% of venues vs. Los Angeles’ 32%); Los Angeles leads on hearing (41% vs. 28%). Performing arts venues are the bright spot for deaf visitors: 83% document hearing accommodations, the best of any venue type; yet only 21% of the same venues document sensory support.
Who Gets It Right
The ceiling is high, and some venues prove it: SFMOMA (17 documented features across all four categories), the California Academy of Sciences, the de Young Museum, and the Exploratorium in San Francisco; the Ahmanson Theatre, California Science Center, and Academy Museum in Los Angeles; the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach; Disneyland Resort; and Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. What sets them apart isn’t a bigger budget: it’s that each one built an accessibility page and filled it in.
Why This Matters Now
In 2028, Los Angeles hosts the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Hundreds of thousands of visitors, including the largest gathering of disabled athletes and spectators on earth, will try to plan trips to the very venues in this audit. Two years out, half of them have no accessibility page, and three have told the public they have an adult changing station.
What Venues Should Do
Publish a page. Name it “Accessibility.” Cover all four categories, even where the answer is “we don’t have this yet.” List the phone number of someone who can answer questions. It is the cheapest accessibility upgrade a venue can make, and this audit suggests it is the rarest.
Methodology. Only Everywhere audited the published accessibility information of 400 venues across the Los Angeles area, San Francisco Bay Area, Orange County, and Greater Palm Springs, as of July 2026. Sources: venue websites and other public information, standardized into a 32-feature framework. Full dataset and per-venue detail: onlyeverywhere.com. Media contact: [email protected].