Disability Access to New Stadiums & Private Homes Focus of Online Magazine
Jackson Heights, NY–The latest issue of United Spinal Association’s Action Online magazine features the group’s consulting work to insure maximum disability access to new sports stadiums, and better design standards in new private home construction for easier adaptation by individuals with disabilities.
To read these articles, go to www.unitedspinal.org/publications/action/.
In New Access At Old Ball Game, the organization’s Accessibility Services Director, Dominic Marinelli, discusses some of the unique disability access features that will be included in the new Yankee Stadium and in Citi Field, the new home of the New York Mets.
For example, at the new Yankee Stadium, people with hearing disabilities will be able to read all public address announcements on captioning boards located on the third and the first base facades. And in both new stadiums, much higher numbers of wheelchair seating locations will be available than in the current stadiums and they will be built on pedestals to provide clear lines of sight for wheelchair-using fans.
In two separate feature articles, United Spinal Association’s Jennifer Perry writes about “visitability,” a new design approach calling for a disability-accessible path of travel, an accessible entrance, and a minimally-accessible bathroom on the entrance level only of newly-constructed private homes, while frequent Action Online contributor Beth Livingston provides an account of an overnight stay at the home of friends that makes a very strong case for including visitability features in new private housing.
Ms. Perry’s piece notes that the American National Standards Institute recently adopted basic but optional visitability provisions in its disability accessibility standard which could be adopted by states or municipalities across the country. And in Diminished Visitability, Ms. Livingston vividly describes having herself and her wheelchair carried up two flights of stairs to her friends’ tiny apartment, and then reversing the same trip on her own the next morning! Hers is a story that every reader will enjoy, and that many wheelchair users will identify with.