Inclusive Playgrounds: A Reality or a Utopia in Our Cities?

The culture of inclusion needs to be continuously promoted, supported, strengthened and tested to remove the barriers and deficiencies still present in the built environment around us. Do the play areas in parks, gardens and squares offer real opportunities for persons with different abilities to play and have fun? Do they promote the principle of integration and create opportunities for inclusion? To answer these questions, an audit tool has been developed to assess the inclusivity of outdoor play areas in the central and suburban areas of our cities. The key elements of the evaluation focus on the physical environment of the playground and are grouped in three thematic areas: physical and sense-perception accessibility; accessibility to the experience and participation and socialisation. Although children’s right to play is now recognised and there is much talk of inclusion, application of the tool to an Italian city has shown that the right to play is not fully and satisfactorily applied. Inclusive playgrounds are still not frequent enough and a new approach to their design is needed.