Commercial playgrounds Houston are indoor or outdoor play spaces for children, ensuring utmost safety in addition to providing enjoyment. While evaluating nonprofit park access and quality, Houston stands at no. 85 among the top 100 largest cities in the USA. Overall, the city’s parks get a score of 35.3. Accessible playgrounds are not the usual commercial playgrounds but offer play possibilities to children with physical and mental disabilities to ensure equity and inclusivity for all. Accessible playgrounds are not only a must in Houston but in any city.
The need for children’s playgrounds
There are numerous benefits of commercial playgrounds in Houston for children:
- They develop a knack for exploring new things and building an adventurous spirit.
- They learn to interact and cooperate with fellow children.
- It helps in teaching teamwork and team-play skills in children.
- Children build their creative sides, problem-solving ability, and leadership qualities.
- The most important is the physical benefits offered by outdoor play. Children develop flexible and strong muscles and strong immunity through regular play.
- Provide an environment for families to spend some fun time together.
The need for accessible playgrounds and playsets
These commercial playgrounds consist of various commercial playsets Houston for children to enjoy something new every time. But, to ensure that the children with special abilities have as much fun as everyone else, there should be special equipment and facilities for the specially-abled children. An playground has all of these facilities.
According to the ADA(American Disability Act), a playground should:
- Offer a range of play experiences to children with varying abilities.
- Provide an accessible path to the play area from a building or parking area and play equipment.
- Elevated play areas must have at least 50% accessible routes.
- Safety surfaces used in the playgrounds must adhere to ADA standards.
Equipments in an accessible playground
- Transfer systems: Children can use these to raise themselves to an elevated platform.
- Support systems: Requirement of some support like handrails and hand grips at short distances inside the playground.
- Ramps: Make it easy to reach the elevated spaces with support systems in between.
- Inclusive slides: Slides are a great source of enjoyment for kids. playgrounds allow children to reach the top of the slide and simply glide through it. Slides improve the upper body stability and tactile senses, allowing children to enjoy the freeing sensation of sweeping down.
- Inclusive swings: Provide a light experience of soaring high in the air. All the children, including the ones with disabilities, should be able to enjoy a safe swinging experience. For this, harnesses and straps are necessary to secure them. Adding some adjustable features to swings to ensure the utmost comforting experience.
- Adaptive comfort seating: Making seating arrangements in close spaces with backrests and armrests can help provide comfort, stability, and support.
- Sensory interaction: Innovative spaces for children incorporating different textures, sounds, and colors can help generate quick stimuli and reflex actions.
- Inclusive merry-go-rounds and See-saws: These should have entry points at a low height and seats with backrests to accommodate differently-abled children.
- Canopies: In an outdoor setting, canopies or shade structures should be available for children to rest away from the scorching sun and heat or winds.
Houston has spent over $56.72 on every citizen in a year to provide park amenities, and 58% of residents have parks near their homes within a 10-minute walk. The progress continues every year in Houston, where equipment has been and will be developed at accessible playgrounds.
Bottomline:
All Play is a playground equipment-based company that provides the best accessible commercial playsets in Houston for all children to have a fun growing-up experience. It also has commercial playgrounds in Houston.
All Play provides children with the best experience of outdoor activities with equipment safely made of antimicrobial and nontoxic material. It provides a fun learning experience to children developing their physical and mental health.
It also provides ADA-standardized equipment that is wheelchair and handicap accessible, ensuring that every individual with unique needs should benefit from their commercial playsets Houston and commercial playgrounds in Houston.
Kids’ outdoor playground is one of the first places where a child can easily experience the risk that comes with challenges. Whether climbing, jumping, sliding, or swinging, the adrenaline rush they feel can sometimes overlook safety. If you want an accessible playground for your child let’s connect with us.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission of the U.S. reports that 20,000 out of 200,000 children playing on the playground come in for traumatic brain injury treatment.
Does this mean that the risk element is eliminated from playgrounds? No. Risk assessment is a vital aspect of a child’s healthy development.
Including preschool playground equipment, every activity on the playground introduces their young minds to real-life concepts. These concepts are split into six categories:
- Slides, climbers, and play decks help them explore heights
- Track rides, swings, and spinners enable them to experience and control speed
- Come in contact with minor water bodies or fire
- Wrestling via interactions with other kids
- Self-dependency through wandering on their own
- Handling relatively dangerous tools
Types of accessible playgrounds
Minimizing meaningful elements of risk in children’s playgrounds can hinder their exploration skills and challenges to overcome. While the standard playgrounds do not incorporate dangerous elements, commercial parks do. This difference in perspective leads to two types of playgrounds, Insular and Adventure parks.
Insular playground:
Insular kids’ outdoor playgrounds refer to the insulation of the activity equipment. It implies that every piece of equipment is insulated from risks of fear and injury. Not only does it cut back on the fun, but it also keeps the kids from having a wholesome experience in one of their initial exposures to risks.
Adventure parks:
A popular playground in European countries incorporated risk factors in their parks. While this may be deemed unsafe by North American standards, they instill all six levels of risk in several playground foundations. These adventure parks promote outdoor means of practical knowledge and healthy development.
Coexistence of safety and challenges:
Follow these bullets to ensure your child’s safety on the kids’ outdoor playground:
- Check if the equipment they are using is built for their age and abilities
- Keep an eye out for your younger ones
- Allow them the freedom to use equipment creatively as long as it’s safe
- Keep them well hydrated
- Encourage them to participate, socialize, and be creative instead of competitive.
Let’s Talk About Equipment:
About 79 percent of playground injuries occur from falls. The statistics are too overwhelming to neglect at this point. Various playground equipment manufacturers and companies recognize this concern and strive to build safer yet equally challenging playground equipment for kids.
Rather than being strongly opinionated on either playground, companies combine the two into a game-changing scheme of products.
Wrapping Up!
At All Play, we have mastered creating safe spaces for kids to play, grow, and learn. Our team of specialized builders create accessible playground and offers turn-key installations for kids’ outdoor playgrounds and play spaces in Texas, commercial playground equipment in Houston, and much more.
Accessible Playground and Inclusive Playground:
While the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) has been the law of the land since 1990, facilities managers of parks, churches, neighborhoods, and other properties are still figuring out how their playgrounds can best comply. They also realize that, regulations aside, offering a fun, engaging experience for kids of all abilities is just the right thing to do. Accessible Playground and Inclusive Playground are good for the families they serve, good for the community as a whole, and ultimately good for business.
As you explore different resources to learn more about accommodating kids with disabilities on your kids outdoor playground, you’ve probably come across the words “accessible” and “inclusive.” You may have wondered what the difference is between the two terms … or do they mean the same thing?
The answer is the two terms do have different meanings.
Playground equipment is accessible if it is usable by kids of any and all ability levels. Or to phrase it another way, it has no barriers that would prevent kids with disabilities from entering the grounds, accessing different elements, or navigating the landscape. For example, an accessible playground would have no barriers at the entrance or along pathways and would offer ramps leading to elevated areas.
Inclusive and Accessible Playground:
A playground is inclusive if it’s designed to encourage engagement and participation by children with disabilities. It goes beyond simply ensuring access and embodies a commitment to offering a fun day of play for all little ones, regardless of their physical condition. For example, an inclusive playground would offer a mix of activities that ensure kids who can’t slide or climb still have fun activities available to them. It also encourages social engagement among all visitors instead of isolating “special” elements in one area.
So if you’re looking at building a new accessible playground or replacing an old one, whether you opt for “accessible” or “inclusive” depends on the needs of your community, the space available, and of course, your budget. If your primary concern is complying with the ADA, taking steps to make your play space accessible will likely help you steer clear of problems. Inclusivity involves going one step further and requires a greater commitment of resources. If an inclusive playground is your goal, you may need to do some convincing to get the necessary funds allocated to your cause.
Of course, every facility’s needs and situation is different, and we’re always happy to help in Accessible Playgrounds. If you need some advice on accessibility and/or inclusivity features for your playground, just give us a call at (713) 939-9888.
