Can a wheelchair user go camping? Yes — here's what it takes.

We came to mobility work from the camper side. For over a decade this shop has built off-road Sprinter conversions for people who wanted to sleep where the road runs out — and the whole time, accessible vehicles were being built a few miles away on the assumption that the destination was a clinic.

Those two ideas should have met sooner. Here's what it takes to put them together.

The lift has to work on dirt

A platform lift deploying onto a level asphalt parking lot is one problem. The same lift deploying onto rutted, sloping, soft ground is a different one. The platform needs somewhere stable to land, the vehicle needs to be reasonably level before you deploy, and the user needs a surface they can actually travel on once they're down.

In practice that means thinking about levelling before anything else — and carrying boards or ramps for the platform to meet. It also means picking a site by different criteria than most campers use. Flat and firm beats scenic.

Power has to last longer

A lift is a meaningful electrical load, and a power chair needs charging. Do that off-grid for several days and you need a house battery system sized for it, with solar or alternator charging to match.

This is the part where the camper experience matters most. Sizing a system for a fridge and some lights is routine. Sizing it so a power chair user is never stranded with a dead chair and a dead lift on the same morning is a different calculation, and it needs headroom rather than a tight fit.

For most campers, running the batteries flat is an inconvenience. For a power chair user it can be the end of the trip. That changes how we size the system.

The interior has to work from a seated position

Galley height, fridge access, water controls, switches, the door handle — all of it has to be reachable from the chair, not from standing. That's straightforward when it's designed in from the start and close to impossible to retrofit into a finished camper.

It also means being honest about floor space. A wheelchair needs turning room, and turning room competes directly with storage and bed layout in a vehicle this size. Something has to give, and deciding what is the actual design work.

The bathroom question

This is the hardest constraint in an accessible camper and the one most likely to determine the vehicle's length. A wet bath a chair user can transfer into needs considerably more room than the compact units most camper vans use.

There are honest answers at several points on the spectrum, from a full accessible wet bath in a 170" chassis to a well-planned portable arrangement in something shorter. What there isn't is a way to avoid the conversation. We'd rather have it early than design around it and disappoint you.

Securement while moving, freedom while parked

On the road the chair has to be secured properly — four-point retractable tie-downs or a docking system, with a crash-tested occupant restraint. Parked, the chair needs to be free to move around the interior.

Designing for both means the securement position has to be somewhere that isn't in the way the rest of the time, which sounds obvious and is routinely got wrong.

It is a real thing you can have

Accessible camping is not a compromise version of camping. Done properly it's the same thing: waking up somewhere quiet, making coffee, and going at your own pace.

If that's what you're after, tell us where you want to go and what you need to get there. The vehicle follows from the trip, not the other way round.