Corinne Kirchner

Designed to deter. Community barriers to physical activity for people with visual or motor impairments.

BACKGROUND People with disabilities are more likely to be obese, in poor health, and get less physical activity than the general population. However, research on community factors for physical activity has generally either excluded most people with disabilities, or overlooked relevant factors of community accessibility. This exploratory study investigated environmental factors affecting people with motor impairments and people with visual impairments in urban neighborhoods. METHODS Quantitative and qualitative methods were used with a nonrandom sample (n=134) of users of four types of assistive mobility technologies: guide dogs, long canes, and motorized and manual wheelchairs. From July 2005 to August 2006, the sample participated in two telephone surveys. Between the surveys, a stratified random subsample (n =32) engaged in an ethnographic phase of observation and interviews. RESULTS Most participants in all groups using assistive mobility technologies rated their neighborhoods as accessible, although they also reported many specific barriers. Users of assistive mobility technologies differed in the amount of reported physical activity and on specific barriers. Problems with sidewalk pavement and puddles/poor drainage were the most frequently mentioned environmental barriers, by 90% and 80%, respectively. Users of assistive mobility technologies were more similar on main strategies for dealing with barriers. All groups reported having to plan routes for outings, to alter planned routes, to go more slowly than planned, or to wait for a different time. CONCLUSIONS Despite legislative requirements for accommodation, people with disabilities face barriers to physical activity, both in the built and social environments. Determined people with disabilities were able to overcome barriers, but required additional expenditure of resources to do so. Community design that can include people with disabilities requires detailed understanding of barriers specific both to types of impairments and to different types of assistive mobility technologies.

Disability Policy, Social Research, and the Social Movement

In the fledgling history of &dquo;disability studies,&dquo; reflection on the role of research in disability policy has flickered but not yet flourished. A few writings have touched on broad aspects of the topic, with roots as deep as social science itself, for example, How does/should research play a part in policy development ? Is there/should there be such a thing as &dquo;advocacy research&dquo;? (This is sometimes framed as, Can an individual be both researcher and advocate, without undermining either role?) In 1992, the National Council on Disability (NCD) sponsored a conference on these issues, with the Americans with Disabilities Act as the policy fulcrum (National Council on Disability, 1992). In 1996, social research was one of the featured topics at the opening session of NCD’s &dquo;Summit on Disability Policy,&dquo; attended by about 200 grassroots consumer leaders (National Council on Disability, 1996). NCD followed that up with a small 1997 seminar devoted to consumer involvement in disability data collection and use (National Council on Disability and National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, 1997). Almost every issue of the journal Disability & Society carries articles that can be plumbed for relevant observations, usually couched in terms of the relationship between two or three of the following: the &dquo;social model&dquo; for theory/research on disability, the disability movement, and policy development (Branfield, 1999; Vernon, 1999). However, to my knowledge, empirical research on how policymakers use social research; on how the media use social research; and on the intersection of social research, media, and policymakers has not yet emerged in the disability policy arena