The GREEN×EXPO 2027 Accessibility Guidelines were adopted on 26 March 2025. They set out the standards that anyone using a wheelchair or a stroller, or walking the grounds with older relatives, may want to know about before the day. The stated purpose is to help build a society in which no one is left behind. To draw them up, the Association set up a review committee for the 2027 International Horticultural Expo accessibility guidelines, and disabled people and academics sat on it as members.
1. Three review meetings and two themed working sessions
The committee met three times: on 12 September 2024, 29 November 2024 and 21 February 2025. Two themed working sessions were held in between, on 8 October 2024 and 20 December 2024, on getting around, wayfinding and how exhibits can be enjoyed. After these five meetings, the guidelines were adopted and published on 26 March 2025.
2. Five chapters and two kinds of standard
The document has five chapters, 1 Introduction, 2 Using the guidelines, 3 Facilities, 4 Services and 5 Transport access, followed by a list of references. Its standards come in two kinds. Those marked ☆ are especially recommended. Those marked ■ are the minimum to be met, and where one of them cannot be met for unavoidable reasons, an equivalent service still has to be provided by other means, such as help from staff.
Three basic principles underpin the whole: equity, dignity and functionality. They follow the International Paralympic Committee’s guide, and the guidelines add two further requirements, reflecting the views of disabled people and training the staff. At the committee, a disabled member asked that the starting point be to ask each person what support they want, since disabilities are diverse and so is the support each individual needs. That view was written into the basic principles. The guidelines apply to all visitor routes and activity areas inside the venue; back-of-house areas are covered for reference only.
Chapter 4, Services, deals with how staff respond, tools for conveying information, multilingual support, services by type of facility and what happens in an emergency. Chapter 5, Transport access, covers the journey to the venue and sets standards for five modes: road transport such as car parks and bus and taxi stops, rail, air, sea, and footpaths. So the trip to the gate is chapter 5, and moving along the paths and through the gardens once inside is chapter 3.
3. Paths of at least 2,000 mm are preferred
Chapter 3 splits its standards into shared spaces, gardens and buildings. For the venue’s paths, an effective width of at least 2,000 mm, enough for two wheelchair users to pass each other, is given as the preferred standard, and gravel or cobbled surfaces that a wheelchair cannot cross are to be avoided. At the committee, a disabled member said that for wheelchair users, a step is best avoided altogether even when it is under 20 mm.
Among the building standards, toilets alone take up 14 pages, which makes them one of the most detailed items in the chapter.
The “common” standards cover five items: signage, tactile paving for visually impaired people, calm-down and cool-down spaces, queuing areas and toilets for assistance dogs. At the implementation meetings held since adoption, members have asked for friendlier names for those spaces, such as “calm corner,” and for temporary accessible toilets to be 180 cm wide, so that two wheelchairs can pass, and to have a hoist.
4. Implementation meetings have continued since adoption
Once the guidelines were adopted, the Association began holding implementation meetings under the name “GREEN×EXPO Accessibility Initiatives.” The first, on 6 August 2025, brought together around 18 people: academics and representatives of disability and welfare organisations, among them DPI-Japan and the national federation of organisations of physically disabled people (Nihon Shintai Shogaisha Dantai Rengokai). The second meeting was on 21 November 2025 and the third on 13 February 2026, with progress on the temporary toilets and calm-down spaces and the placement of signage on the agenda.
At the third meeting, members said signage should be placed at a height a wheelchair user can see, and asked for consideration for people with low vision.
As of 21 September 2026, when we researched this article, we could find nothing on the Association’s site about a fourth or later meeting. Nor had any progress report on whether the facilities are actually in place been published at that point.
5. Built on the Tokyo 2020 and Expo 2025 guidelines
The Association explains that the guidelines were drawn up with the accessibility guidelines for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games and for Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai in mind, along with Japan’s national standards for barrier-free access to buildings and transport. Chapter 5, on transport access, is based on the universal design guidelines for transport access used at Expo 2025.
A year earlier, in March 2024, the Association had adopted a sustainability strategy setting basic policies in six areas: human rights, labour, anti-corruption, diversity and inclusion, accessibility, and the environment. The accessibility guidelines give concrete form to one of those six.
Disabled people on the committee; the facilities still to be checked
Disabled people were not merely asked for their opinions; they sat on the committee as members. The implementation meetings have carried on since the guidelines were adopted. What cannot be checked yet, as of September 2026, is whether the facilities are being built to them. The facilities you will find on the day are covered in a separate article.