By Emilia Podesta
The outdoors has been a deeply cherished part of American culture for a long time, evident in the enduring love of the National Park System and the steadily growing number of visitors to national and local parks annually. For the disabled community, the outdoors can be inherently inaccessible and not enticing, with few resources directed toward changing that. The balancing act between creating inclusive venues and experiences for people with disabilities without negatively impacting the natural environment makes accessibility in outdoor spaces particularly complex. This collaboration must be revisited continuously in search of workable solutions.
North Face has been a leading outdoor brand for decades, with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area. An outdoor brand is a specific company which focuses both on creating outdoor gear, apparel, and sponsorships with various outdoor athletes. These brands often try to work within environmental conservation and focus on being as green as possible, though this does not necessarily apply to all outdoor brands. These brands tend to cater towards a specific outdoor audience, primarily being able-bodied individuals doing extreme outdoor sports.
In April 2026, the North Face Universal Line was released — a collection of adaptive gear designed to make the outdoors more accessible for everybody. The line included four main pieces: the Universal One Sleeping Bag, the Universal Wawona 3 Tent, the Universal Daypack, and the Universal Camp Traction Mules. Each product was designed with different bodies and abilities in mind.
What makes this collection especially meaningful is that it was designed by two disabled North Face athletes, Vasu Sojitra and Maureen "Mo" Beck.
Vasu Sojitra is an individual who has been living with only one leg since he was 9 months old. He fell in love with skiing and trail running and continues to do both of these sports at a professional level. He has skied off of the face of Denali, completed various long distance cross country ski trails, and has become the first person to ascend various mountains via crutches.
Maureen "Mo" Beck is an individual who was born with a limb difference and grew up loving the outdoors. She works with the Paralympic climbing committee and is a multi-medal Paralympic climbing athlete, getting gold at the 2014 World Championships. She has also been named National Geographic’s Explorer of the Year in 2019.
Drawing on their own lived experiences outdoors, and bringing different disabilities to the table, they envisioned equipment that could meet the needs of a wide range of individuals in outdoor settings. It is empowering to see a company not only include disabled voices but place them at the helm of the design process — and more companies should follow suit. Making the outdoors accessible is no small task, and four pieces of equipment are far from a complete solution. But this line is a step in the right direction, and it invites people to consider how small implementations of accessibility can spark larger change.
Two standout pieces are the Universal One Sleeping Bag and the Universal Wawona 3 Tent. Unlike traditional sleeping bags, the Universal One forgoes a zipper entirely in favor of a one-hand magnetic closure and insulated wing panels, allowing people with varying temperature regulation needs to find their ideal level of warmth. The bag opens fully for easy entry and exit. The Universal Wawona 3 is a redesign of an existing North Face tent, updated with features such as tactile tent poles that allow blind and visually impaired users to set up camp independently, a wider entryway with no threshold lip for straight roll-in wheelchair access, and an expanded vestibule that shelters mobility devices from the elements.
Importantly, the gear presented by this Universal Collection is at a similar price range to other gear sold by the company which does not specifically cater to the disabled community. This however does not negate the fact that much of the outdoors is very expensive and probative to many individuals for this reason.
On a personal level, I have always been outdoors, camping, backpacking, and more. I have found immense joy and comfort in being outside and for these reasons I value the power of nature immensely. I also believe that nature and the outdoors is for everyone, and benefits everyone. When I learned of this collection I was so excited to see my two passions overlapping, it is often rare to see public overlap of disability and outdoor recreation! As someone who is looking into careers within accessibility outside I personally found this line both fascinating and invigorating. When I recently went into a local REI store (an outdoor recreation store which houses various outdoor brands) I saw the universal collection front and center of the store. While researching this collection I also found various anecdotes from individuals who had bought from the collection without knowing that it was designed specifically for disabilities. This is a positive sign in my opinion because it shows that good design does not just have to cater to a certain population, but that good design should work for everyone.
Further Resources about Disability and the Outdoors
View the North Face collection
Blog and Lived Experience of Disabled Woman - Disabled in the Wild
Community Network Organization - Disabled Hikers
Learn more about Maureen "Mo" Beck
Learn more about Vasu Sojitra
Originally Posted: 28 May 2026