Accessible Streetscape Design Survey: Need your help

[Benito Pérez]

I'm reaching out to make aware and seek your support on a project that my team at Smart Growth America (in partnership with the International Parking and Mobility Institute and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund) and a collection of dedicated volunteers have been working on: Accessible Streetscape Design Guide

All people in a community rely on the transportation network to get from point A to point B in the interest of living, working, and playing. However, the system historically has not been designed to benefit all users equally. More specifically, there are design and planning considerations that have not been wholly considered, resulting in adverse consequences to the physical mobility plus the interactive and safe use of streetscapes for people with disabilities. Those design and planning considerations have proliferated over the years for various reasons and context, but boil down to a lack of awareness of the concept of inclusive accessibility and the real life implications to end users (understanding “to walk in their shoes”). 

Deliverables

• Resource guide exploring streetscape accessibility from mobility, vision, hearing, cognitive ability, and language barrier perspectives. Exploring from conceptualization, community engagement, design, construction, and maintenance of the streetscape for accessibility.

• Help to facilitate the development of accessible streetscape guidelines for incorporation into NACTO’s Urban Street Design Guide and other related enforceable guidelines.

• Legislative advocacy push for a transit ready communities legislative idea (one pager for a US federal legislative push), aimed to push for standards development, discretionary and formula funding to facilitate accessible streetscapes, and support land use and zoning innovation. An unabridged legislative proposal will be fleshed out later this spring with US based disability partners, but would appreciate international perspectives to create a template legislative proposal.

So my hope in this email is seeking support and guidance for the development of this project, specific asks include:

• Assistance in distributing an end user survey not only across the US, but internationally (to inform the guide of key issues and end user priorities)
  
• Peer review of the literature / best practices catalog 
• Peer reviewer of the resource guide, targeted draft for September 2024

Here is the link to our accessible streetscape survey information, with links to the survey directly, and a link to our marketing toolkit. Any additional questions or concerns (or want to chat over the phone on how your organization can help), please let me know. Premise being we are seeking feedback from end users (people with disabilities) from all over the country (And beyond the US) to help inform practitioners of the user experience and key mobility challenges (vision, hearing, physical, language, and cognitive ability) on the street. We are aiming for over 2000 responses, so we are really hoping to get as much help as possible from our partners to help distribute the survey. Please let us know what questions your team may have that we can help answer to gain your team's support in distributing to your member organizations (And in turn, to their respective community's end users). Are there key languages we should translate the survey into to be more accessible to your network (we are thinking Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Tagalog, and Vietnamese)?

As to the document structure, it is envisioned as a modular document, with key topic areas (parking, transit, bikeways, intersections, etc) and process areas (community engagement, etc) that can stand alone. Each module frames the problem statement when it comes to accessibility, state of the practice, applicable survey input, and recommendations (or framing questions for establishing guidance/standards).

Happy to discuss further and look forward to hearing back from you on sharing the above out. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Benito

--

Benito O. Pérez, AICP CTP CAPP, (he/him/his)

Policy Director

benito...@t4america.org 

| ph: 202-743-3503

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A project of:

[Benito Pérez]

Good afternoon,

Here is our latest note on the survey for a final push on it to the collective network. Thanks for all that you do.

I hope this email finds you well. I'm reaching out to make you aware and seek your support on a project that my team at Smart Growth America (in partnership with the International Parking and Mobility Institute and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund) and a collection of dedicated volunteers have been working on, the Accessible Streetscape Design Guide.

This survey will aid Smart Growth America, the International Parking & Mobility Institute, and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund in the creation of an Accessible Streetscape Design Guide.  This effort will help inform practitioners of the user experience and key mobility challenges (vision, hearing, physical, language, and cognitive ability) on the street. It will cover best practices and serve as an initial conversation piece on scoping out standards on streetscape accessibility not only in the US, but internationally.

We need your help. Whether you identify as a person with disabilities, or know of people and organizations in your network, we need their feedback on accessible streetscapes. We need your help in distributing an end user survey across your network and/or partner disability affiliated organizations. We are aiming for 2000 responses (and about 700 as of this writing). We are extending our survey deadline from May 24th to June 7th. Hope you can help us meet our goal by our final survey deadline.

Below is the link to our accessible streetscape survey, followed with links to our marketing toolkit to amplify the survey in several languages. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please let me know at accessible [dot] streetscapes [at] smartgrowthamerica [dot] org.

Survey 

• Top right on the survey landing page, there is a dropdown for English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese
• More info on the survey is here.

Marketing Toolkit

• English
• Spanish
• French
• Arabic
• Mandarin Chinese

Survey Flyer

• English
• Spanish
• French
• Arabic
• Mandarin Chinese

Benito