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ACCESS-ed Resource Description

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Community Health Environment Checklists (CHECs)

This website describes a series of Community Health Environment Checklists or CHECs, which help to describe the accessibility of buildings using the lived experiences of persons with disabilities as a guide. Very quick and easy to administer.

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Posted by: muschel3 on Tue Nov 24, 2020 at 4:47 p.m.

This looks like a good way to check for accessibility features in several environments, but it seems odd that only some of these account for vision or hearing impairments. Exercise facilities in particular could be hazardous environments for someone with low vision or hearing, so it would be important to have specific items on the checklist to account for those who have these impairments.

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Posted by: kellymcgavock on Tue Dec 15, 2020 at 6:49 p.m.

The CHECs seems like a great tool to evaluate accessibility features in the community. I am wondering if there are plans to make this more comprehensive by accounting for more impairment populations. Currently, the checklist accounts for individuals with mobility, low vision, and hearing impairments. Will cognitive impairments eventually be included?

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Tools and Resources

It took me several years of struggling with the heavy door to my building, sometimes having to wait until a person stronger came along, to realize that the door was an accessibility problem, not only for me, but for others as well. And I did not notice, until one of my students pointed it out, that the lack of signs that could be read from a distance at my university forced people with mobility impairments to expend a lot of energy unnecessarily, searching for rooms and offices. Although I have encountered this difficulty myself on days when walking was exhausting to me, I interpreted it, automatically, as a problem arising from my illness (as I did with the door), rather than as a problem arising from the built environment having been created for too narrow a range of people and situations.

Susan Wendell, author of
The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability