Students and leaders at the University of Iowa are helping a nonprofit map public spaces across the state developed with accessibility in mind, in order to ensure people of all abilities can enjoy Iowa’s parks and other public areas.
The Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities at the UI, headed by director Travis Krause, partnered with Pathfinders Resource Conservation and Development to help expand its map of accessible public spaces in Iowa and launch a survey for the public to inform them of the accessibility of nature areas, cultural sites and more.
Krause said with the survey having launched in December, the project is off to a good start.
“Our success really hinges on the help of people across the state providing us the information through this survey tool …,” Krause said. “So we will be successful if people are using the tool and participating, and we’re going to continue to keep pushing that out.”
The goal behind the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities is to connect university staff, students and resources to organizations and community partners in order to help develop and complete projects that meet their needs, Krause said. The initiative has worked with Pathfinders, an Iowa nonprofit focused on helping revitalize communities through conservation and economic development, on many projects in the past, and Krause said its accessibility map is a perfect fit for a project.
The nonprofit’s accessibility map mainly covers south-central Iowa, and Krause said the survey and other efforts will help expand it to the whole state. It includes museums, trails, campgrounds and other spaces that are partly or fully accessible.
Students in the university’s Iowa Community Integrated Geography Organization, or ICIGO, worked with the initiative and nonprofit to use GIS and other mapping tools to display the information for the accessibility map, Krause said, and he and his graduate assistant, Jessica Monday, worked on the survey.
Monday, who is seeking a master’s in public affairs, said she helped craft survey questions after going over research literature about accessibility in public spaces. So far they’ve received 16 responses, she said, and are hoping for more as the survey is distributed by Pathfinders and others.
Krause said the project has been fun so far, with everyone, including him, learning new things. Monday said she’s learned about new technologies and areas of accessibility that she previously didn’t think about, like having adult changing tables available in park restrooms.
“As an able-bodied person, there are just things that we don’t think about when we’re designing our spaces, or even describing what’s available in our spaces, and so it can be difficult for people who have different needs to plan trips to these spaces and enjoy them fully,” Monday said.
The survey has no closing date, Krause said, so people can keep responding well into the future, with updates to the map coming after.
There is a lot of energy surrounding the issue of accessibility in public, outdoor spaces, Krause said, which will hopefully help stretch the survey and map’s reach to those who need it or want to help. A possible next phase of the project could be asking people about what areas need to see improvements in their accessibility and map those as well, he said.
“We want everybody that seeks to enjoy Iowa’s public spaces to not be limited, and to be able to go there, be comfortable, feel safe, all of those things for individuals with disabilities and their caregivers,” Krause said.
