Handicap Access

   The activity of play has a very important role in a child’s development. Through play children learn to explore their imaginations, overcome challenges and learn important social skills. Play helps children develop physical fitness, strength, and coordination. Because of their almost unlimited potential for diversity, soft playgrounds can play an integral role in the development of our children. It is important that all children have these wonderful opportunities, including, and in some ways especially, the handicapped.

   PlaySmart has always believed that a playground should be highly accessible to people. That may sound like a no brainer but many playgrounds are really not highly accessible. They expect participants to climb through awkward openings or consist of trails that do not allow room for one person to assist another in traversing the playground.

   Designing a playground to be accessible accomplishes many more goals than just accommodating children with varying capabilities. PlaySmart believes that the role of a soft playground includes attracting entire families, not just children. We want parents to feel that they can enter the playground and participate with their children. In order to encourage parents to participate we have made our playgrounds easy to traverse. PlaySmart designs doorways that are spacious and easy to pass through and floors that don’t hurt knees. We also recognize your staff will need to traverse your playground often in their roles of maintenance and cleaning. How easily staff can navigate the playground will impact your labor costs and the effectiveness of how well your playground is maintained.

   The writers of the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, have understood that soft contained play systems are a unique type of activity and have acted accordingly. The diversity, physical activity and opportunity to experience challenge that we want our children to have would be largely eliminated if soft playgrounds were held to the same standards as buildings and other types of play structures. This does not, however, dismiss the soft contained playground industry from their responsibility to provide play opportunities for ALL of our children

   One of the most challenging aspects of designing to accommodate all children, including the handicapped, is the broad scope of capabilities we are talking about. The first part of the ADA’s definition for a disability is “any person that has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities”. A qualifying disability could be mental issues that have little effect on physical capability. The impairment could be sight, hearing, genetic, or a disease that in some way impairs function. All of these people have certain things they can do as well as things that are more difficult for them. The things they can and can’t do are not the same. The disabilities we are talking about are almost as diverse as imagination itself. When you zero in on one type of impairment and say that we have to accommodate this one, you are effectively discriminating against the vast majority of society that does not have that particular impairment. It has to be remembered that we are designing playgrounds for all children. At PlaySmart, we believe this can be done.

   The wide age range of soft playground participants provides many of the same challenges as does designing for handicapped access. Soft playgrounds have to consider the ages of participants and provide age appropriate attractions throughout the playground. If done well, this alone will provide a wide range of possible activities for those with varying capabilities, if they can get to them. PlaySmart has addressed the issue of access by making sure that, to the fullest extent possible, every playground has at least one primary pathway that is designed for the greatest number of participants to traverse. This typically means that our primary pathways consist of steps or ramps, leading to a more level pathway of floors on the upper levels. Steps and ramps are accessible to more people than other ways of elevating children to upper levels such as climbing towers and ladders. Climbing towers and ladders are great play Events but should not be part of a primary trail. A sufficiently large and well-designed playground will typically have a variety of pathways with a variety of obstacles, climbs and levels of challenge. Since we are designing playgrounds for all children it is important that playgrounds have some pathways that many children will find quite challenging, just not on a primary pathway.

   Almost no matter how a playground is designed, there will be some children who could not participate without assistance from another person. For this to be possible, pathways must be wide enough for one person to participate at the side of another person. PlaySmart’s patented Tensioned Web Flooring System is actually very easy to traverse and accommodates handicapped needs better than any other flooring system. Besides being wide enough for two or more people at the same time, a tensioned web floor is a stable floor with a great deal of traction. Because we weave the webbing together in an open pattern there is also a multitude of places within easy reach for a child to get a grip.

   Another aspect of accommodating a handicapped child is the expectation that he or she is likely to have falls and stumbles, pretty much like all the rest of us actually, but you definitely don’t want the playground to cause an injury. This is an area where soft contained play systems can really shine, though not all do. Some contained playgrounds just simply are not soft, PlaySmart is. Every single surface in a PlaySmart playground that a child can come into contact with is padded or designed to be impact absorbing. We are particularly proud of our patented Tensioned Web Flooring System because of its impact absorption. You can drop an egg from over 20’ and it will bounce when it hits one of our tensioned web floors. That is better impact absorption than ASTM approved safety surfacing typically produces.

   Diversity is another way soft playgrounds can address the challenge of meeting the needs of all children. Since the capabilities of our children vary so widely with age and other factors, the best way to accommodate the needs of the most children is to take advantage of every opportunity to add play attractions that are fundamentally different from each other. Many soft playgrounds do not take advantage of this opportunity. For example, a playground that has a lot of plastic tubes is just repeating the activity of crawling, over and over again. Everywhere a child goes in a PlaySmart playground they are confronted with a different type of play activity or trail, representing a different experience and different level of challenge. This diversity improves the odds that any given child will find play activities they are capable of participating in.

   Creating playgrounds that allow all children to experience challenge, adventure, camaraderie, and fun should be the goal of all playground designers. There are special rewards in creating playgrounds that include the handicapped. PlaySmart is devoted to continually improving the accessibility of our playgrounds as well as offering play Events that are as well matched to children’s capabilities as possible.