Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: Liveable for who?

20 minutes

Find Out: The effect of accessibility on liveability

25 minutes

Take Action: Accessibility audit to improve liveability

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions and success criteria

Students will:

understand how accessibility can limit or improve the liveability of a place by exploring case studies and assessing features in their own community.

Students can:

explain that access varies for different people and how this affects liveability
identify how access is important for quality of life and inclusion
conduct an accessibility audit to assess and improve liveability.

Tune In: Liveable for who?

Step 1

Begin by asking students to write a sentence describing what makes their community liveable.

If students need prompting, probe by asking what they like about where they live. e.g. the weather, proximity to shops/malls/cafes, playgrounds/skateparks, participating in local sports, the people (friends and family), their house, the environment, etc.

Step 2

Once students have written their statement, ask them to consider if their statement about what makes their community liveable would be the same if they considered people who:

were elderly,
had English as an additional language,
had recently migrated to Australia,
had a disability (i.e. physical, sensory, psychosocial, intellectual),
were unable to access transport (e.g. drive a car, take public transport or ride a bike, etc),
or were unemployed?

The language choices we make have an impact on the way people with disabilities are perceived. If you would like to ensure you are using the preferred language, the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations recommends using the following terms when talking about people with disability:

• people with disability (children with disability, women with disability, etc)
• lives with disability
• has a disability.

Step 3

Discuss why their statements may not be true for others. Although students may suggest that we all have different opinions and perceptions of liveability based on what we prefer, draw their attention to accessibility i.e. how barriers to doing things can limit liveability, such as not being able to get to the shops or use the local swimming pool.

Explain that in this lesson, we’re going to explore the effect of accessibility on liveability and what makes a community liveable for different groups of people. This might include people without cars, families, people with disabilities, older people and teenagers.

You may want to ensure (or recap) that students understand the meaning of ‘accessibility’ - ‘the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible’ (Source: Human Rights Commission).

Find Out: How accessibility affects liveability

Step 1

Ask students if they have any barriers or difficulty doing the things they want to or need to do in their community. Highlight that accessibility is assessed and based on different people’s needs, wants and life stages, but it is also influenced by proximity to things (i.e. location - urban, regional and remote). Point out that when accessibility is improved for one group of people, it usually benefits everyone living in that community.

Step 2

If you completed the previous lesson in this unit, Design a 20-Minute Neighbourhood, recap/elicit the features often referred to when we objectively assess what makes a place liveable. If you didn’t complete this lesson, provide your students with this Subjective and Objective Factors of Liveability factsheet and invite students to pair up and list these measures of liveability in the Student Worksheet. Ask pairs to share their answers and list these on the whiteboard in a table format. For example:

Measure of liveability
• Access to education • Access to healthcare services • Access to recreation/leisure facilities • Access to shops, restaurants and amenities • Access to public transport • Access to community facilities • Infrastructure i.e. water, electricity, gas, parking, etc. • Housing • Access to green and public spaces • Walkability • Safety

Step 3

Highlight to students that if someone cannot or has difficulty accessing any of these features, it can impact their quality of life and how they perceive liveability. Ask students to work in pairs and list on their Student Worksheet the specific types of potential barriers that some people may face when wanting to access these features. Invite students to list a barrier on the whiteboard table.

Measure of liveability

Potential barriers

• Access to education
• Access to healthcare services
• Access to recreation/leisure facilities
• Access to shops, restaurants and amenities
• Access to public transport
• Access to community facilities
• Infrastructure i.e. water, electricity, gas, parking, etc.
• Housing
• Access to green and public spaces
• Walkability
• Safety

Examples include:
• long distances between where people live and what they need/want to do (proximity)
• a lack of wheelchair/scooter ramps
• buildings without lifts
• inaccessible public toilets
• shops and buildings without step-free access
• cluttered and hectic environments that can be a sensory overload
• no subtitles for movies screened in cinemas
• no interpreters
• unsealed or narrow footpaths
• lack of or poor signage

Step 4

Outline to students that we’re going to look at some Case Studies about how accessibility affects liveability. Divide the class into five groups, with each group allocated to a Case Study. Each group should read/view their Case Study to identify any barriers to accessibility and learn what has been done to improve accessibility, making notes in the space provided in their Student Worksheet. Note that two of these case studies are videos, so you will need to make sure that students have a device to view these.

Case studies:

Video case study: Shops that support customers of all abilities (youtube.com/watch?v=D3ErxMvdDPo)
Video case study: Tactile warning systems and footpaths (youtube.com/watch?v=wzgoQDuioMY)
Beach Accessibility in Australia
Chester - Europe's Most Accessible City
Accessibility and Melbourne’s Trams

Step 5

Once each group has finished, reorganise the class into jigsaw groups – ensure that each student in the jigsaw group is from a different case study. Invite the jigsaw groups to draw on what they have learnt from improving accessibility in their case study to suggest a set of universal liveability design principles that could be adopted to improve accessibility and reduce barriers to navigating different places. For example, ensure ramps are installed in all public buildings, shopping centres and supermarkets have dedicated quiet hours, footpaths are a certain width to cater for wheelchairs, scooters and prams, etc.

Encourage groups to explain what the benefits would be for the whole community. Ask groups to share their ideas with the class.

Extension opportunity:

Students could compare their ideas with examples of places prioritising accessibility to improve liveability for all: theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/14/what-disability-accessible-city-look-like

Students could explore the impact of living in inaccessible cities, see theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/22/second-class-citizen-readers-navigating-cities-disability

Take Action: Accessibility audit to improve liveability

Step 1

Recap what students have been learning about by explaining that accessibility can be a barrier to livability, but when it is ensured, it supports wellbeing and inclusive communities.

Explain that students will now be auditing their own local community. Brainstorm with the class whether they think the suburb/area their school is located in is accessible and why/why not.

Step 2

Organise the class into small groups (ideally four students). Using a Google Map of your local suburb/area, explain to students that they’re going to conduct an audit by identifying the features of liveability in their own community and assessing whether these features are accessible to different groups in the community.

Step 3

Using the Liveability Audit Template, and before starting the actual audit task, as a class agree on defining the accessibility rankings by filling out the space provided in the top right-hand corner of the template.

Encourage students to think about their own perspectives but also the perspectives of people without cars, families with young children, people with disabilities and older people in relation to accessibility. As an alternative, groups could audit accessibility for only one demographic instead of all of them, taking into account their rights, needs, wants and stages of life. For example, teenagers may want access to recreational facilities like a skatepark, a family with young children may need access to childcare centres, whereas everyone has a right to access education.

Step 4

If time permits, invite students to brainstorm a list of features to list in the template that they’ll assess for accessibility. Remind students that accessibility is often affected (or compounded) by proximity – the distances people have to travel to get to where they need to go.

Otherwise, students could list these features in the audit template:

Schools (including childcare centres and kindergartens)
Healthcare services
Community facilities e.g. library, community garden
Recreation/leisure facilities
Shops, restaurants and cafes
Public transport
Housing
Green and public spaces e.g. playgrounds, parks
Walkability e.g. footpaths and proximity

Step 4

Once students have created their list or filled out the liveability features in their template, invite them to begin the audit by looking at Google Maps. Encourage students to highlight the features or annotate a screenshot and rate each feature in accordance with your class definitions.

Step 5

When students have finished, come together as a class and discuss each group’s findings – what is accessible and what needs to change to improve liveability? Why is it important for inclusivity?

Extension opportunities:

Write an email to your local council with your audit data results, recommending actions where improvements to accessibility are needed.
Complete the audit as a field trip by walking around your local community to assess the accessibility of liveability features. This would allow other features to be assessed that may not be evident from a Google Map, such as ramps, wide footpaths for prams and scooters, quiet shopping hours, public seating, signage and information such as public transport timetables (multilingual, braille, icons), housing diversity, ground tactile warning indicators on footpaths and pedestrian crossings, entry railing and bike paths.

Alternative scale-down:

Audit your school environment for people with disabilities, considering access to classrooms, corridors, toilets, facilities, the car park, canteen and public transport. Write an email to the principal or school council with your results, recommending action where accessibility needs improvement.

Reflection

Reflect on this lesson with your students by inviting them to answer the following questions, either in discussion or on the Student Worksheet.

If you couldn’t access public transport near your house, it was too far to walk and there was no one to drive you, how would you get to school?
How do you think accessibility and how it shapes the liveability of a place, affects wellbeing?
What is the connection between accessibility and inclusive communities?

Accessibility for Liveable Communities

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Accessibility for Liveable Communities

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