KOMPAN

By Jeanette Fich Jespersen, M.A., Manager of the KOMPAN Play Institute

 Play together for ALL children.
All children have a right to play, and all children have a right to play together. The physical, social, cognitive, emotional and creative competences of the child are in the years up to 6-8 mainly trained through play. After this age these competences are enhanced through play. This is why playgrounds are such important places for children – they simply play to grow! And luckily, they like it!


Play to grow
Children with disabilities, like other children, play to grow. Like everybody else, the children with disabilities are individuals before they are children. This means that they have individual needs: Some are big, some are small, some are able to walk, some are not. This is what makes it such a challenge to build accessible playgrounds for all children.

Play together
Some examples of accessible playgrounds have ended up being solely for children with disabilities, simply due to the fact that the huge amount of ramps and small amount of play value make this sort of accessible playground boring to those who have no disabilities. By accessibility here the interpretation seems to be only wheelchair accessibility. As not all children with disabilities are wheelchair users, and a great part of the wheelchair users in fact can move outside of the wheelchair, we need to consider our moves closely when we make playgrounds for all children. The main part of children with motor disabilities can move by their own force, and for these children maybe even more than for children with no disabilities, the ability to move and be physically active by your own force is important: It might be that the children with motor disabilities cannot do all the things their friends can, but they manage doing some things. The self- confidence children win by doing things on their own is an important part of play value in the playground.


Playing together regardless of your abilities or disabilities of course is important to children with disabilities. It is important for all children. The children with no disabilities learn empathy, learn tolerance and learn that you do not need to be at the exact same level – of age, abilities, language etc. - to play together. This is important learning for children of today, raised to go to school with peers and in fact meet almost solely children with their own interests, age and socio-cultural background. For a lot of the children of today, the playground is one of the very few places left to meet playmates with different backgrounds.

WHO ICF
In the WHO International Classification of Functioning and Disabilities (ICF) which was put out autumn 2001 there is a focus on abilities. The word is INCLUSION as the WHO wants us to focus on the abilities of people, not the disabilities. In strong words: No one is disabled, but some people do not have the proper aids or assistance. This attitude of inclusion lies within the KOMPAN philosophy, that all children should have opportunities to play together, regardless of their abilities and disabilities.


ADA – Americans with Disabilities Act
Accessibility does not necessarily mean inclusion, but the two can walk hand in hand. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) are not the only guidelines on accessibility but so far the only act. Autumn 2004 the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) will be implemented in the UK after having been introduced in 1995. Germany has a DIN standard 33942 from 1998. There are moves in Europe now to make a common accessibility standard, but till then the ADA is the most thorough material on accessibility that we have. The ADA is being edited all the time.


In 2001 the ADA implemented the playground accessibility guidelines. Representing the playground equipment industry in the Washington work group was KOMPAN. For historical reasons the ADA is very oriented towards users with motor disabilities, for instance wheelchairs or walkers. So having an impact absorbing safety surfacing, which at the same time can be an accessible route for wheelchair users, is a must in the accessible playground. There are two sorts of accessible safety surfacing: rubber and engineered wood fibre. 


Ramps and stairs
The accessibility to the playground and the equipment should thus be dealt with. But there are still important details to remember in the playground area: Toilets for instance are of quite some importance and so is seating for caretakers, benches and tables. One of the main issues in the first place is room and space as the children with motor disabilitiesoften take up more room to for instance rise as others, as they move in basic patterns: From all four to two legs. This can be seen in the ADA guidelines for play equipment, too: Broad platforms and stairways are demanded when we talk combination systems. Please note that ramps are not the only solutions – ramps are necessary when you have more than 20 elevated level activities (activities that cannot be reached from the ground). Very few European combinations are like that. And once again the play value of ramps can be debated, the lasting play value of ramps can not be debated for very long…


Transfer platforms before stairways are necessary to guide the child into the product, so are good handgrips. Holes in the floors are another way of giving good grip, supporting children with motor disabilities into the product.


Transparency
An important part of the accessibility discussion is transparency. By offering transparent products with lots of openings giving possibilities for interaction between theinside and the outside of the product, we help children with disabilities and their caretakers along. Sometimes caretakers do not like to let go of the children they are looking after, thus nearly assisting them where they might have been able to do things independently. The transparent products give the caretakers an opportunity to look after the children without doing too much for them. The transparent products also give children who cannot leave the chair a chance to be with the others, as they too can see the children inside the products.

KOMPAN GALAXY
The last example I would like to present is a very transparent and challenging product series, which won the English PHAB (Physically Disable and Unable Bodies) committee Independent Living Design Award in 2001 for being an integrative product: The product has entrances and activity centres all over which makes it possible for all children to be within range of action. The activities are innovative, no slides for instance, so there is not only one way and certainly no prescribed right way to use the product. It has something to offer all levels of abilities. Last but not least, it is a product range for the over 6 year olds. And when we talk about this age group, we also talk about children who from quite early on do not want to be perceived as childish. This goes for children with disabilities too. The rugged and challenging, abstract and transparent look of these KOMPAN GALAXY products appeals to children that age, and the functions and possibilities makes it a line for all abilities – as there is only right ways of using this product.

The DDA
In the beginning I told about the DDA and accessible playgrounds in the UK. The process has come rather far over there, and I would like to share a few pictures from an accessible playground at the Magna Science Center in Rotherham. This playground meets the demands of any wheelchair user with its long accessible pathway between the different theme and play areas. Worth a study and very worth while for all children, regardless of their abilities – or disabilities!

 
Sources:

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm

http://www.disability.gov.uk/dda/

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