I recently visited the Athens Rotary Southside Accessible Playground, located at Richland Avenue and Dairy Lane. In 2013, the park was renovated to add nearly $70,000 worth of new equipment that is accessible to all children and adults, especially those with physical and developmental disabilities. In their vision of the park, the Athens Rotary suggested that their goal was “to create a play environment which would recognize every child’s right to equality of play opportunities.” Several individuals and organizations from the community donated money to help purchase the equipment, as the photo on the right illustrates (Flat Freire is barely discernible on the far right edge of the sign).
The playground’s largest structure -- a jungle gym with slides, rock walls, and other sensory motor devices -- contains ramps that allow people with wheel chairs or limited mobility to access the structure without having to use stairs. Of course, not all of the equipment on the grounds is accessible to everyone (including the structure with ramps), but a concerted effort has been made to ensure that many of the structures are accessible to a wide audience and that the park itself is accessible via paved walkways that connect to the bike path.
In “The Social Construction of Disability,” Wendell argues that there are a number of social conditions that produce “dis”-ability: violence, the pace of life, and medical practices, to name a few. In her discussion of how the public world is constructed for people without any physical impairment, she writes, “Not only the architecture, but the entire physical and social organization of life tends to assume that we are either strong and healthy and able to do what the average young, non-disabled man can do or that we are completely unable to participate in public life.” Often, those of us without disabilities are unaware of our able-bodiedness, or that such able-bodiedness may be only temporary. We are able to go through our lives without concern for how we will get to where we are going, or how we will access resources (such as playgrounds). Thus, Athen’s first and only accessible playground serves as a visible reminder of the work that still needs to be done as well as a celebration of the work that has already been done to make the city accessible to all.
Posted by Lauren
