Duke, UNC, NCSU students help city add play area for disabled kids

By ADAM PLAYFORD, The Herald-Sun
August 8, 2006   9:30 pm

DURHAM -- It's all in the incline.

Getting that right is the key to creating a slide for someone in a wheelchair, Ripal Shah said.

If the slide's too shallow, there won't be enough acceleration. Too steep, and riders (and their chairs) will be thrown off.

But engineering students at N.C. State University are on the case, Shah said.

And if they can make it work, the slide has a home waiting.

That'll be Durham's Morreene Road Park, between Erwin Road and the U.S. 15-501 overpass, where construction began Tuesday on a new playground designed for children with disabilities.

The playground is being built by the Durham Parks and Recreation Department. But the idea came from Shah and some of her friends when she was an undergraduate at Duke.

A mother was telling them that she couldn't take her disabled child to the playground.

"That kind of got a couple of us thinking," Shah said.

Fast forward two years, and those thoughts are becoming reality.

Shah -- who graduated from Duke in the spring -- founded From The Ground Up, a nonprofit organization that creates recreational and social opportunities for kids with disabilities.

And Tuesday, a team of volunteers erected the first pieces of the playground's first play structure. Parks and Recreation bought it, and volunteers were found to build it to save money that can go to more equipment for the park.

The goal isn't to create a playground just for disabled children, said Sarah Hogan, a recreation manager with the parks department who works with special populations.

"We spent the last year and a half researching and figuring out what would make the playground accommodate all children -- including children with disabilities, including children without disabilities," Hogan said. "And the focus really is to have them be able to play together."

Other equipment -- the first of which should be installed in the next two months -- is being designed and built by engineering students at Duke, UNC and N.C. State, who are rethinking playground classics and transforming them for the disabled.

"They're really buying into the idea of creating something different," Hogan said. "And they've talked to parents, they've talked to physical therapists, they've talked to us in trying to put in place what would work from the design standpoint."

The N.C. State group joined late in the school year, Shah said. Besides the slide, they're working on Braille chess and checkers tables for the visually impaired.

The Duke and UNC groups have been involved longer.

The Duke team is working on a spaceship play area and a sandbox that is half on the ground and half elevated for someone in a wheelchair, Shah said. Kids will be able to move sand and toys from one half to the other with a pulley system.

The UNC team is working on an accessible nature trail. The trail should be done in September, and the Duke team's contributions in October, Shah said.

And, though the parks department is installing its main structure this week, it will take awhile for everything else needed to be completed, Hogan said. She her target date for the playground's opening is Oct. 1.

The park will be "truly accessible" for children with disabilities, said Hudson Veal, a sales representative from Carolina Recreational, the company from which the city bought the structure. He was overseeing the volunteers' installation Tuesday.

"It's going to be a great playground," he said. "Once it's done, I think the people of Durham will really love this park."

Shah doesn't plan to stop there. She wants From The Ground Up to go nationwide, helping build parks like this in cities everywhere.

"There's actually a tremendous dearth of recreational opportunities for children with disabilities," Shah said

© Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. All material on heraldsun.com is copyrighted by The Durham Herald Company and may not be reproduced or redistributed in any medium except as provided in the site's Terms of Use.