By Tom Scott
On May 12th, United Spinal Association’s Accessibility Services staff conducted an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility training program for occupational therapy students enrolled in the Master’s Program at Pennsylvania’s Temple University.
The program’s goal was to educate students on how to perform an Accessibility Site Assessment of a public building for an upcoming class project and provide a crash course on the basic “building blocks” of accessibility. 
The idea is to supply students with the necessary tools to handle accessibility issues while they are working in the field. These budding professionals will play a role in improving the quality of life of people within the disabled community, so it’s important for them to look beyond the blueprints and see how real lives are affected by architectural barriers. That’s what we try to show them,” says Jennifer Perry, a compliance specialist at Accessibility Services, who has been conducting the training session at Temple for 3 years.
Perry has been with United Spinal for 12 years. Part of her job is to provide plan review services for accessibility compliance and perform accessibility site assessments to ensure compliance with state and/or federal accessibility requirements. She is an important part of the team of professionals, including certified accessibility specialists, plan examiners, attorneys, architects and code enforcement officials that make Accessibility Services so successful at what they do. Its mission is to exclusively make our built environment accessible and increase awareness about accessibility issues commonly encountered by individuals with disabilities across the country.
Topic covered during the training included: what makes up an accessible route––such as clear width of the route; firm, stable and slip resistant ground surfaces; and elevation changes that are permitted (slope). Accessible parking spaces, toilet room accessibility, and compliant doors/maneuvering clearance were also discussed in detail, as well as the ADA and other federal laws that mandate accessibility in the built environment.
Michael J. Gerg, MS, OTR/L, CHT, CEES, CWCE, Academic Fieldwork Coordinator/Clinical Instructor at Temple University’s College of Health Professions––Department of Occupational Therapy believes the training program hosted by Perry improves his students’ understanding of ADA design standards and the population it impacts.
“Many occupational therapists work with individuals with disabilities and organizations to assist them in community access. The students actually complete an ADA site survey as a project after Ms. Perry’s lecture. This helps students without disabilities understand the challenges that someone with a disability may have when trying to access the community and builds the empathy needed to understand those challenges,” Gerg says, adding “Ms. Perry’s up to date information on any changes in ADA legislation and interpretation allows our students to have the most current information available. She continues to be a resource to the students when in need and she makes herself available as a resource. In the future, the Temple OT community would like to collaborate more with United Spinal.”
Many of the 35 student participants expressed gratitude to United Spinal for providing guidance on the ins and outs of accessibility. “This was a very informative lecture. The material was well taught and explained,” says student Brocha Stern.
In addition to the training at Temple, Accessibility Services has recently hosted a program at Kingsboro Community College to train students on how to perform an ADA assessment for restaurants, as well as a training at SKIP of New York—a nonprofit that provides advocacy and support for families who care for their chronically ill or developmentally disabled children at home.
Custom training programs are just one facet to Accessibility Services’ efforts. The team’s certified building inspectors, complete as-built accessibility inspections to make certain that the construction matches the plans and address any oversights to further ensure compliance. In existing facilities, it identifies and prioritizes barriers that are required to be removed so that its clients can be proactive and budget for modifications rather then being reactive in responding to complaints and lawsuits.
Accessibility Services is a program of United Spinal, which helped write the ADA of 1990 and the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 and is an active participant in writing building codes at the local, state, and federal level. It is one of the longest tenured providers of continuing education for members of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and is also an approved provider of continuing education for the International Code Council (ICC) and the Society of American Registered Architects (SARA).
For more information on United Spinal’s Accessibility Services or to find out about custom designed training programs, please visit www.accessibility-services.com.
