everyoneincluded blog

Walkability is a relatively new concept that focuses on determining if a community or neighbourhood is pedestrian friendly (see Walk Score as a Google Map mashup that is a really cool application). As part of this measure, features that are measured include things like sidewalk continuity, population and employment density, land use mix, safety and security and a few other factors. However, although there is mention of accessibility for things like safety at crosswalks, there is very little mention of accessibility.

The “everyone challenge” is to embed factors that are relevant to people with disabilities, seniors, families with small children, etc. The current approach basically gives a neighbourhood credit for simply having a resource. If there is a recreation centre within a mile of a community, it would score points for that. For the other 20 – 40% of the population where this might not be enough it doesn’t take into consideration whether or not the building is accessible, whether or not there are inclusive programs and services and whether there are accessible paths from residential areas to accessible destinations (resources that meet the daily needs of citizens).

More work needs to be done to determine if the existing measures are the right ones or the measures are accurate for everyone while still being feasible to assess. The walkability scores you will find on the Internet leverage easy to access information from GIS (Geographic Information Systems) databases. This approach uses this data to develop proxy scores for walkability and ideally similar approaches can be found that can consider accessibility and inclusion.

More to come…

mike accessibility, community engagement, inclusive programs walkability

A relatively recent journal article by C. Brown et al “Trajectories of Life-Space Mobility After Hospitalization” in the March edition of Annals of Internal Medicine found that hospitalization decreases life space in older adults. Surgical hospitalizations are associated with immediate marked life-space declines followed by rapid recovery, in contrast to nonsurgical hospitalizations, which are associated with more modest immediate declines and little evidence of recovery after several years of follow–up.

This article brings to light 2 issues: impacts on mobility and a different way of assessing mobility. Life space assessment (LSA) is a measure of where a person goes, the frequency of going there and the dependency in getting there. Although the authors cite that this method may be best used for older adults, it may serve as a measure for people with disabilities as well (many of whom are older). Modification of the Life Space Questionnaire (LSQ) developed by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (1999) may provide an interesting way to measure integration of people with disabilities within their communities.

mike community engagement, recreation