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Durham Rockwood Park in Durham, NC PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
For All to Play Durham’s public playgrounds still need work to provide spaces and structures for children with disabilities. BY REBECCA SCHNEID backtalk@indyweek.com
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t the 53 playgrounds in Durham, most children can enjoy all the structures available, including slides, swings, and see-saws galore. For Victoria Facelli and her daughter, Elizabeth,* though, this is not the case. Elizabeth has cerebral palsy, and Facelli continuously reckons with how her daughter is excluded from the community in ways that she did not anticipate. As Elizabeth enters her childhood years, this exclusion is very noticeable on playgrounds. “It’s really limiting, and that really sends a message to my kiddo about whether or not she’s welcome, and whether or not Durham is proud that she lives here,” Facelli says. 10
July 28, 2021
INDYweek.com
While all new or renovated playgrounds must adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines, these requirements are outdated at 30 years old. An ADA-compliant playground might have an accessible entrance and transfer stations—spaces where a child in a wheelchair can pull themselves onto a play structure. But even with those features, many kids will still find themselves relegated to certain parts of the playground, unable to enjoy most of the play features. Furthermore, while each playground has to have one structure that is accessible for children with disabilities, that could be something as small as a tic-tac-toe board. And if an entire playground is surrounded by mulch, it
makes the entire structure hard to maneuver for someone in a wheelchair. Of all the playgrounds in Durham, only one listed on the city’s Parks and Recreation website has an accessible swing: Drew/Granby Park. Facelli and her daughter often go to accessible parks in Raleigh, such as Sassafras All Children’s Playground at Laurel Hills Park. But, when it was closed for months during the pandemic, the two couldn’t even go there. “That’s the problem with having these tokenized spots of inclusivity … when they’re closed, we’re stuck,” Facelli says. Why does this happen? For one, says Betsy MacMichael, the executive director of First In Families of North Carolina, it’s the cycle of inaccessibility. The group is a non-profit dedicated to helping people with disabilities and their families be engaged in their communities, When a space is inaccessible for children with disabilities, their families don’t access those spaces, and these children are not seen. Able-bodied families in the spaces then tend to forget disabled children exist, so then, when largely able-bodied planners are creating new parks, they often don’t keep accessibility in mind, and the cycle continues. “In these small neighborhoods, when there’s an accessible swing, sometimes the parents will take it down with the excuse that it’s a big swing that takes up space and ‘no one uses that one anyway,’” MacMichael says. “It takes a while for this to become the norm.” Additionally, Durham’s playgrounds are not large, regional spaces. Many of them are small neighborhood parks, and while the number of them means they’re accessible geographically, it also means they are rather basic play structures. Durham’s parks department sends out an evaluation survey periodically to Durhamites, asking them what kinds of play structures have been working, which have not, what they want to see in playgrounds, and more. Facelli says she applauds this effort, but asks: what about the minority, left out in a system that rewards the majority? Earlier this year, Facelli emailed the Durham city council and parks department, telling her and Elizabeth’s story and asking that the city celebrate Disability Pride Month—in July—by tending to the needs of the children with disabilities within the city. “As we are needing to tear down unsafe structures— like what’s happening at [Rockwood in South Durham, where the youth structures are being renovated]—and replace them, can we replace them with accessible structures?” Facelli asks. “We need to restructure the way our
