Original Article
Accessibility and usability of parks and playgrounds

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dhjo.2017.08.011Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Public parks and playgrounds are an environment for leisure activity, which all generations can enjoy at low or no financial cost. Evaluating the accessibility and usability of parks and playgrounds is crucial because their design, environment (natural and built) and safety could restrict participation of persons with disabilities.

Objective

To evaluate the accessibility and usability of 21 public parks and playgrounds in three metropolitan cities of New Zealand. Secondary aims were to compare the accessibility and usability by park type (destination or neighborhood) and deprivation level (high and low).

Methods

Twenty-one parks were evaluated. A stratified random sampling was used to select 18 parks (six from each city). Three additional parks were purposely selected (one from each city) at the request of each respective city council. The parks and playgrounds were evaluated using a customized tool. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Results

None of the parks we evaluated met the national standards and/or international guidelines for park and playground design. We identified potential accessibility and usability issues with car parking spaces, path surfaces and play equipment as well as lack of lighting and fencing. The presence of amenities (e.g. toilets and drinking fountains) was more common in destination parks. Fewer parks in areas of higher deprivation had accessible car parking spaces and main paths wider than 1.5 m.

Conclusion

Our evaluation identified potential design, environmental and safety barriers to park and playground based participation for persons with disabilities across the lifespan. A larger, more comprehensive evaluation of parks and playgrounds is required.

Section snippets

Methods

We evaluated the accessibility and usability of 18 randomly selected, and three recently refurbished parks (nominated by the city councils), parks and playgrounds located across the three metropolitan cities in the Greater Wellington Region in New Zealand.

Results

We evaluated 21 parks in total; eight (38%) were destination and 13 (62%) were neighborhood (Table 1). The geographical deprivation of the areas where the parks were situated in ranged from one to nine; 11 (52%) were classified as low deprivation and ten (48%) as high deprivation (Table 1).

Discussion

This study evaluated the accessibility and usability of 21 public parks and playgrounds from three areas within the Greater Wellington Region using a customized evaluation tool (PARCS), as well as comparing accessibility and usability measures of parks and playgrounds by geographical deprivation and playground type (neighborhood or destination). This study identified several key areas concerning the design, environment and safety of the parks, potentially creating barriers to participation of

Conclusion

Parks need to be accessible and usable by all people across the life span, including persons with disabilities. This evaluation of 21 parks found issues in the domains of accessible car parking, path surfaces, play equipment access and usability, play richness, fencing and lighting. These aspects could contribute to leisure and PA participation barriers in these specific environments for persons with disabilities. A more comprehensive evaluation of parks and playgrounds across the whole of New

Funding

This research did not receive any grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Conflict of interest

On behalf of all the authors, I wish to confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication and there has been no significant financial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Wellington City Council, Hutt City Council and Porirua City Council for their support with this study. We would like to thank CCS Disability Action and The Blind Foundation for assisting in the development of the evaluation tool.

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