Whether it’s a playground and the park around it, a ballfield and its spectator areas, a rec and wellness center, a swimming pool, or some other type of recreation, sports, or fitness facility, ensuring your facility is inclusive—not just accessible—is an important mission to ensure you’re reaching your whole community.
The Institute on Disability states, “If people with disabilities were a formally recognized minority group, at 19% of the population, they would be the largest minority group in the United States.” And the fact is, any one of us can join that minority group at any point in time, through accident, disease, or aging.
Created in 1997 by a group of architects, product designers, engineers, and environmental design researchers led by Ronald Mace at North Carolina State University, the 7 Principles of Universal Design aim to guide the design of environments, products, and communications. The Center for Universal Design at NCSU states that these principles can “… be applied to evaluate existing designs, guide the design process, and educate both designers and consumers about the characteristics of more usable products and environments."
The 7 Principles of Universal Design are a good starting point as you consider whether your facility is truly inclusive.
- Equitable Use: The design should be “useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.” Guidelines include: providing the same means of use for everyone (identical if possible, equivalent if not); avoiding segregating or stigmatizing anyone; equally providing for privacy, security, and safety for all users; and making the design appealing to all users.
- Flexibility in Use: The design should accommodate a wide range of preferences and abilities. Guidelines that support this principle include: providing choice; accommodating right- or left-handed access and use; facilitating accuracy and precision; and providing adaptability to the user’s pace.
- Simple & Intuitive Use: It should be easy for the user to understand how to use the design, regardless of their experience, knowledge, language skills; or concentration level. Guidelines that support simple and intuitive use include: eliminating unneeded complexity; maintaining consistency with user expectations and intuition; accommodating a range of literacy and language skills; arranging information according to its importance; and providing effective prompting and feedback during and after task completion.
- Perceptible Information: Information should be communicated effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities. Guidelines include: using different modes, such as pictorial, verbal, and tactile, to provide redundant presentation of essential information; providing adequate contrast between essential information and the surroundings; maximizing “legibility” of needed information; differentiating elements in a way that can easily be described, which makes it simpler to give directions; and providing compatibility with a variety of techniques or devices used by people with sensory limitations.
- Tolerance for Error: The design should minimize hazards and consequences of accidental or unintended actions. Guidelines include: arranging elements to minimize hazards and errors, with the most commonly used elements being the most accessible and hazardous elements eliminated, isolated, or shielded; providing warnings of hazards and errors; providing fail-safe features; and discouraging unconscious action in tasks that require vigilance.
- Low Physical Effort: The design can be used efficiently and comfortably with a minimum of fatigue. Guidelines include: allowing people to maintain a neutral body position; using reasonable operating forces; minimizing repetitive actions; and minimizing sustained physical effort.
- Size and Space for Approach and Use: Regardless of the users body size, posture, or mobility, there should be enough space and items should be sized to be approachable, reachable, manipulable, and used. Guidelines include: providing a clear line of sight to important elements for anyone standing or seated; making reach to all components comfortable for anyone standing or seated; accommodating variations in hand and grip size; and providing enough room for assistive devices or personal assistance.
To learn more, visit https://design.ncsu.edu/research/center-for-universal-design/.