National Center on Accessibility enters 10th year

The National Center on Accessibility has made nationwide advancements toward the development of programs for people with disabilities since its introduction in 1992. In a decade, the NCA, located at the IU School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, has educated and assisted in developing programs with national clients including the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and NASA.\n"Through our work with these agencies and others, NCA has played a critical role in increasing awareness of inclusion of people with disabilities in parks, recreation, leisure and tourism while advancing the spirit and intent of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Rehabilitation Act and other disability legislation," said Executive Director of the NCA, Gary Robb.\nThe agencies that have worked with the NCA have witnessed the success of the program over the last decade and recognized its impact within their own organizations.\n"The NCA has contributed significantly to increasing the level of access at BLM so that everyone knows that accessibility is a shared responsibility," Kay Ellis of the Bureau of Land Management said.\nThe NCA's national activities include developing accessibility guidelines for recreational environments, conducting training programs, delivering education through computer technology, creating a Web site for public use and education, promoting cooperative research with other agencies and publishing research findings on a regular basis.\n"The National Park Service was attempting to put on training programs and Gary (Robb) was working with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to do the same, so they pulled resources and developed Project Access and the NCA spearheaded from that," said Director of Marketing and Special Projects Jennifer Bowerman-Skulski.\nRobb said he created the program with interest from Congressman John Meyers and the National Park Service in response to the Americans with Disabilities Act.\nThe most visible accomplishment of the NCA is "the guidelines that the U.S. Access Board will set forth that include accessibility guidelines in recreational facilities, specifically in swimming pools," Bowerman-Skulski said.\nRobb agreed that one of the NCA's greatest accomplishments is in the recreation realm. Robb is president of the recently established National Alliance for Accessible Golf, which works with the major golf associations to make golf courses accessible to people with disabilities.\nSince 1992 more than 20,000 professionals have been trained through the NCA. The NCA's research has helped develop national accessibility guidelines for recreational environments including pools, parks, golf courses and beaches. Most recently the NCA researched accessibility in Daytona Beach, Fla.\n"Temporary surfaces were installed from the land to the water and were tested to see which surfaces were easiest to travel over for people with disabilities," Bowerman-Skulski said. \n"We also checked with the maintenance people who installed the surfaces to find out which surfaces were easiest to install and which held up the longest."\nAs an associate professor of recreation and park administration on the IUB campus, Robb teaches Inclusive Recreational Service, a course where students explore how different recreational facilities can be developed to accommodate people with disabilities.\n"Recently in R270 we had students work in groups to research the accessibility of different campus buildings," Robb said.\nUpcoming NCA projects include a 90-minute webcast on June 20 which will cover the NCA's research projects, critical findings and practical solutions for recreational areas including trail surfaces, golf policies and procedures, beach access surfaces, swimming pools and current research on playgrounds.\n"We are doing a really neat webcast on all the research we have done over the past 10 years," Bowerman-Skulski said. "We want to distribute practical information that practitioners can implement"