Opening the door for accessibility ratings in the community: stage of adoption - despite the substantial impact of the ADA legislation, people with disabilities (PWD) still encounter significant…

Opening the door for accessibility ratings in the community: stage of adoption - despite the substantial impact of the ADA legislation, people with disabilities (PWD) still encounter significant barriers in public building accessibility that prevent equitable community participation. One solution is to make information about building accessibility publicly available, but to date, this information has been virtually nonexistent. This project, based at the R2D2 center and in collaboration with the universities of new mexico, columbia, marquette and independencefirst will deploy the accessratings for buildings APP suite (ARB) into urban/suburban and rural communities. The goal of this project is to improve community participation for PWD through the successful implementation of a novel building accessibility information system that has been developed over the past decade and is ready for community testing. Objectives of this study are: 1) prepare for community rollout by modernizing apps to post covid-19 food services (including a health safety section) and develop a short-form of the accesstools APP for novice assessors; 2) deploy ARB into test communities; and 3) validate ARB outcomes with community stakeholders. Outcomes include: 1) PWD having easily available accessibility information about public buildings targeting a 75% saturation rate of restaurants in 7 selected communities, 2) facilitation of better community participation for all, 3) successful development a community methodology for replication in additional locales, and 4) published refereed papers and presentations. Planned products of the ARB project include: a) updated accessplace and accesstools question taxonomies, 2) a short-form version of accesstools, 3) a community engagement and ARB rollout protocol, 4) demonstrated adoption of the ARB information apps in 7 communities 5) documentation of successful ARB community rollout from pre and post surveys.