As parasport athletes from around the world converge on Tokyo for the Paralympic Games beginning August 24, there’s another background conversation going on. This one’s about opportunity. The truth is, not everyone gets an equal shot at that brass ring.
Associate Professor Kelly Arbour-Nicitopoulos and her colleagues are working to support the dreams of every child. It all starts on the playground.
For most children, whether they grow up to be Olympians or simply healthy members of society, the journey begins on the local playground. Moving and playing and testing the body outdoors — these are simply part of the story of human development.
And yet, not everyone gets to live that story fully. The urban playground experience is a rite of passage that not all children enjoy.
“The thing is, many playgrounds aren’t actually fully accessible,” says Kelly Arbour-Nicitopoulos, an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education who specializes in disability and physical activity. “For example, the wood chips. Those not only keep out a young child who uses a mobility device, it also sends the message that they are not welcome. Spaces like that can end up dividing families. And that can have a ripple effect on the whole community.”
In a peer-reviewed paper published this year, Arbour-Nicitopoulos and colleagues analyzed 35 international studies on the design of existing playgrounds – not just the play structures themselves but their physical and social surroundings — to get a benchmark of what best practices look like right now. The results were fairly discouraging. The verdict: We can do better.
“Play is integral to the health and well-being of all children, and a fundamental child right", Arbour-Nicitopoulos says.
Playground play, in particular, is a unique type of play. It offers children with diverse needs and interests the chance to advance their imagination, their self-awareness, their social and motor skills and their identity. So the design of playgrounds is really important.”
Arbour-Nicitopoulos and her colleagues produced a set of evidence-based recommendations to help shape the thinking of playground designers, municipalities and families. All told, they amount to a potential snapshot of the future of urban play.
The next-gen playgrounds may be as different from current playgrounds as the seesaw-and-swingset playgrounds of old are from the playgrounds you see now. They’ll be much more sensitive to the spectrum of children’s needs. They’ll accommodate kids with not just physical disabilities but cognitive and socioemotional ones as well.
We’ll see changes on multiple fronts—from entry points, to access to elevated components, to the gestalt of the whole space. (There will be a much bigger multi-sensory dimension, for example — but also little oases of calm for solitary play, where sensitive children can get a reprieve from overstimulation.) And members of the disability community will be involved in the design process from the get-go. Fun, safe, and completely inclusive: that is the trifecta.
It’s already happening. U of T researchers have been collaborating with Canadian Tire JumpStart Charities as they pioneer new, more inclusive playgrounds—the first of which was unveiled in 2018 in Charlottetown. (The plan is to build them in every province.)
“Our interdisciplinary team of researchers — with expertise in childhood disability, physical activity, children-and-youth geographies, and planning — is the ideal group to be conducting the research on inclusive playground design,” says Arbour-Nicitopoulos. “Our intent is to use the evidence gathered and lessons learned from the Jumpstart playgrounds to push the thinking on accessible playgrounds ever further.”
Think of it as a transformation of the modern playground into a space where every kid can grow — wherever their dreams take them.
For more on accessible play, see:
Canadian Disability Participation Project
Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities
United Nations – Right of the Child
United Nations Committee on the Right of the Child. General Comment No. 17 (2013) on the Right of the Child to Rest, Leisure, Play, Recreational Activities, Cultural Life and the Arts (Art. 31).; 2013. https://www.refworld.org/docid/51ef9bcc4.html
Active Living Alliance for Canadians with a Disability