SCI Superstar: Ashley Lyn Olson

When you’re paralyzed at the age of 14, life can take two different paths – you can use your injury as a catalyst for a new life or become consumed by anger over impossible circumstances. Ashley Lyn Olson chose the former, turning her focus to the world of travel and making it her mission to explore life to the fullest.

Since 2006, Ashley has been sharing her travel experiences across the US and beyond on her site, WheelchairTraveling.com. This accessible travel site, blog, social network, and video collection is one of the most comprehensive wheelchair travel databases available. It features a wealth of information on accessible travel destinations, accommodations, transportation, and more.

Notably, 1/3 of the articles are written by community members, reflecting a rich diversity of perspectives and abilities. From the start, Ashley has emphasized the importance of including other people’s stories, resulting in over 1,000 articles filled with invaluable resources.

Why She’s Fearless

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, Ashley was an all-star basketball athlete with an idyllic childhood. However, at 14, her life changed dramatically when her family was involved in a car accident that killed her father and left Ashley, her mother, and sister injured. Ashley became a T12 paraplegic, while her older sister wasn’t on the trip.

Despite these challenges, Ashley earned a full scholarship to the University of Southern California and graduated with honors, overcoming learning disabilities along the way. After college, she worked as an executive assistant at a winery for five years before deciding to dedicate herself full-time to WheelchairTraveling.com.

Ashley’s website offers first-person accounts of her travels as a paraplegic and includes contributions from others in the community. She has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Japan, and beyond, sharing her natural talent for speaking and communicating. Her site provides essential information on accessible accommodations worldwide, things to do, transportation options, and much more.

Additionally, it offers tips from Ashley and others on flying, packing, booking hotels, traveling with caregivers, using manual versus power chairs, recreational activities, tour companies, adaptive equipment, and more.

Advocacy & Expertise

Ashley Lyn Olson is not just a traveler but an advocate for accessibility and inclusion. She is a recognized expert and trailblazer in the world of wheelchair travel. Through her extensive travels and firsthand experiences, she has become a leading voice in advocating for more inclusive and accessible travel options. Her work on the Access 2 Parks Project is a testament to her dedication, providing guides (some with videos) to help plan trips and detailed reports on creating accessibility in parks. This project addresses issues like non-paved trails and inadequate accessible platforms, leading to collaborations with parks and non-profits to enhance accessibility.

Ashley has shared her inclusive travel advice at the Abilities Expo and served as a peer mentor for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, helping newly injured individuals transition into their new lives. Her efforts were recently recognized by the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, where she was featured in a special exhibit. She also frequently collaborates with the Bay Area Outreach Program and has written for New Mobility Magazine multiple times. Ashley continues to travel, making the world more accessible one destination at a time.

Ashley Lyn Olson’s fearlessness and passion for exploration inspire others with SCI to pursue their own travel dreams. She’s living her true passion and giving others the courage to do the same.

– Visit her site: Wheelchair Traveling