Our recent research highlights knowledge gaps in the design and planning of public playgrounds that are accessible to children with BLV. Blindness and low vision refer to a range of visual abilities across all human age groups (WHO, 2001). BLV has recently been understood as a disability of access - people with BLV derive information in pieces until a mental image or map is formed. BLV suitable playgrounds need to enable access across different dimensions - from orientation to moving across the playground; to understanding the equipment and spatial setups; to interacting with carers and parents, and most importantly, interacting with other children. Planners, designers and educators now recognise that play environments need to be appropriately designed for children with BLV. Importantly, playgrounds need to be accessible, safe, exciting and complex (Lieberman et al, 2019), yet knowledge of best practice is siloed.

Engaging in play is an early form of learning, whereby children develop the ability to communicate with their peers and acquire the ability to make intelligent decisions (Mellou 1994). Play is integral to every child’s physical, sensorimotor, neurological, and social development (Senda 2015), as it supports the learning of adaptive, flexible, and resilient responses to challenging situations. Providing different levels of risk for children of all abilities is critical for cognitive development and physical well-being (Stanton-Chapman & Schmidt 2016). However, research into 10-12 year olds and their parents (Yantzi et al. 2010) found that with decreasing vision, parental confidence in the children’s ability to be physically active decreased, as did the child’s self-assurance in their abilities, resulting in parental restrictions to children engaging in risk-perceived high motion playground activities.

Additionally, children with BLV can experience social participation difficulties during peer play with fully sighted children (Pierce-Jordan & Lifter 2005), so playgrounds can play an essential role here in enabling BLV children’s play and learning experiences. The majority of literature concerning inclusive playgrounds takes the form of local or organisational guidelines (e.g., NSW Department of Planning and Environment 2018), and it is unclear how user consultation has been incorporated.

More formal research is extremely limited. Moreover, children with BLV have specific needs, particularly in terms of O&M and non-visual engagement, that demand specific design considerations beyond those of inclusion and universal design. Limited studies exist on the lived experience of BLV children and carers in navigating to, orienting on, and interacting with equipment in playgrounds.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child [10, article 13] explicitly states the fundamental right of the child for rest and leisure, for play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the children. The Australian NSW Child Care Planning Guideline (NSW Government Planning & Environment) describes good playground design as a mix of inclusive learning spaces, to cater for all children and different modes of learning, stating that “all children must be supported to fully participate”. The National Construction Code, Discrimination Disability Act 1992, Disability (Access to Premises – Buildings) Standards 2010 sets out the requirements that equitable access to childcare facilities must be available for all community members. However, such legislation, building code or council planning might not enable accessibility for BLV communities to public playgrounds, due to insufficient practice guidelines and missing links with playground equipment providers.

Recent research shows that when playground developers only target the minimum standards (in the construction and architectural design of playgrounds), play value is ignored and children with disabilities miss out on the potential social, emotional, and communication benefits that diverse playground structures have to offer (Stanton-Chapman et al, 2016, 2019). Council initiatives past 2020 showcase inclusive playground framework and community engagement but these neglect integration of BLV. Research has indicated that for better playgrounds, universal design can be adopted to enable accessible and inclusive environments for children and adults with disability, under full consideration and implementation of features in the planning stages of a design (Stanton-Chapman et al, 2020).

Preliminary research work by our team has included the creation of a matrix for playground criteria for children with BLV collated from existing reports, initiatives and reviews (Reinhardt et al.,2023). There are significant gaps in how Universal Design principles could be applied or what constitutes a good playground or equipment design for BLV users, with limited knowledge available as grey literature (websites) only.

Access to visual content is significantly compromised for people with BLV, with alternate representations required for engagement and understanding. Increasingly, technology is playing an important role in the presentation of visual content for people with BLV, such as 3D printing (Holloway, Butler and Marriott 2018); audio labelling (Holloway, Butler and Marriott 2018, Coughlan, Shen and Briggs 2020); sonification (Brown et. al. 2003); and refreshable tactile displays (Holloway et. al. 2022). For orientation and mobility (O&M) in new places, multi-modal communication is crucial for pre-visit training and confidence building as well as onsite support. 3D printed models are effective in conveying 3D spatial information (Holloway et al. 2019), as are volumetric symbols (Holloway, Butler and Marriott 2023), but limited studies exist outside controlled lab environments.

Additionally, smartphones and internet of things (IoT) technologies can also play a crucial role, such as Google Maps for navigating to areas of interest or beacons that can support real-time navigation within smaller spaces by providing more sensitive location awareness, and access to other contextual information about individual locations. However, studies are limited particularly for outdoor settings such as parks, and focus primarily on O&M (Parker 2021). To adopt these for social or physical play is a significant opportunity.

Co-design is increasingly recognised as a valuable methodology, particularly when working with marginalised populations. However, the voices of children are often not captured in research to the same extent as adult participants and there is a particular gap in the inclusion of children with disabilities (Sun et al., 2023). Whilst several studies report on co-design for children with special needs in various contexts (Frauenberger et al. 2021; Druin 2002), or designing learning environments for children with BLV (Talib et al. 2020), few (if any) specifically address our focus of co-design of playgrounds for children with BLV. In prior work, we have conducted most of our co-design work with the professionals who work with children with BLV, with direct input from children being limited to feedback on prototypes (e.g. Holloway, Butler & Marriott 2022).

In this project we plan to make advances in research methodologies by exploring how children with BLV can have a more active voice within a co-design framework for co-creation of design concepts. However, co-designing with young children with a disability (such as BLV) adds extra challenges such as overcoming communication barriers and managing the various developmental stages they experience. This research team intends to build upon the current limited literature in this often-overlooked field to extend our knowledge about children with BLV and their parents/carers, as well as how their involvement may influence the design of public infrastructure and services.

Information and navigation for pre-visit planning.

• In prior research work pre-visit planning has emerged as a vital component, as people in the BLV community want to learn about accessibility measures that enable their full participation. This includes information about the space to identify what features it offers for play, and navigational aids so that they can reach the destination independently. We will explore technology options to aid pre-visit planning such as information on websites and mobile apps for navigation.

Inclusive tactile maps on site for playground orientation.

• Upon arrival at a playground, an onsite tactile map will provide spatial information to assist BLV visitors in finding and moving between their chosen play areas. The provision of such maps is limited to just four instances of 2.5D tactile maps in Australia. However, we have found that 3D tactile maps are easier to understand (Holloway, Butler & Marriott, 2018) and are more inclusive, as they are also inviting for sighted users (Holloway, Marriott, Butler & Reinders, 2019). Tactile playground maps and their components may also be used as part of the consultation and co-design processes by demonstrating real and imagined playground layouts. In preparation for this project, we have already developed a suite of evidence-based tactile 3D icons for use on inclusive tactile maps of playgrounds (Holloway, Butler & Marriott, 2023).

Prototyping Playgrounds

• We will prototype innovative playground equipment and spatial layout designed to engage the senses and promote physical and social play. Prototypes will be created and fabricated, informed by the co-design workshops with BLV children and carers. The prototypes will explore unique solutions for providing creative and challenging strategies for children to engage in physical and social play. The prototypes will be tested with members of the BLV community. Existing playground site(s) will be tested for novel solutions at scale, so we can explore and evaluate how spatial characteristics inform the user experience of playground equipment and layout.