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UCC project brings outdoors to everyone

posted September 23, 2008
The MEAF-funded Utah Conservation Corps Access to Service Project was recently featured in the Utah State University Online Newsflash describing how an inclusive crew is working to make trails and a community garden accessible.

This month, an accessible garden supported by the Center for Persons with Disabilities received the finishing touches that will make it operational come spring 2009. This garden for people of all abilities is being created by a team that includes people with disabilities.

The community garden project is the next step in an ongoing effort to make recreation accessible. The Center for Persons with Disabilities has supported the Utah Conservation Corps' Access to Service crew since it began surveying recreation areas for accessibility in 2007. This year, the crew's work on the garden's accessible planters continued through August 16. The garden will be ready for planting in the spring of 2009.

Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, the CPD, USU Extension and private donors have all cooperated on the project.

While the idea of accessible outdoor recreation has been around for a while, crew co-leader Andy Zimmer said inclusive crews are new to the Corps Network, of which the UCC is a member. The experiment that has helped crew members realize just how many levels of ability exist. Zimmer uses a wheelchair himself, but areas accessible to his manual chair may still be inaccessible to motorized chairs. Quinton Williams, a crew member with visual impairment, can go where a wheelchair can't, but if the signs are not in Braille, he cannot read them. "They don't have Braille on the restrooms at the camp sites that I've seen," he said.

The project has demonstrated how many components come together to make an area accessible. For example, a restroom facility can meet all the requirements, but the trail leading to it could be too steep for a wheelchair to navigate. That said, one of the surprises for crew co-leader Jamie Mastro was how few changes were needed to make a recreation area usable for everyone. Since she is working on a master's degree in architecture, she is familiar with ADA guidelines, but this project has shown her the real-world situations that people with disabilities face. "It's turned out to be a really great experience," she said.

The Access to Service crew has blazed its own trail, right down to the implements it uses. "We discovered going out there that there was a lot of opportunity for (creating) adaptive tools ... since nobody has really done a project like this before," said Zimmer. Assistive Technology Lab coordinator Stan Clelland modified gardening tools for people with limited hand function and designed accessible planters and a distance-measuring wheel that can be bolted to a wheelchair. Many of the implements were made in the AT lab, which is a program at the CPD.

This year, the crew continues to survey campgrounds and recreation areas in Utah, in addition to building structures in the community garden. Their survey findings will be posted on the Forest Service website, allowing users with disabilities to make more informed decisions on the best recreation areas for them.

Already, the crew's suggestions have led to improvements at Second Dam up Logan Canyon. "It was a little scary before," Zimmer said. "Now it's great. It's just like rolling down the sidewalk."

Under his leadership, the Utah Conservation Corps' Access to Service project was named 2007 Project of the Year by the Corps Network, and the Utah Commission on Volunteers named Zimmer the Americorps Member of the Year.

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