Recap: Accessible design webinar
An Overview of the June 2025 Understanding Ableism Webinar: “How Design Can Become More Accessible”
By Colin Wilfrid, AmeriCorps KCDC Coordinator
(Watch the webinar here on our YouTube channel.)
The fifth webinar in our 2025 Understanding Ableism series focused on how the design of buildings and other public properties can be more accessible to all people regardless of their abilities. This webinar, which took place on June 17, had four panelists, all of whom have experience with inaccessible design flaws, and they have brainstormed ways in which future architects can avoid these mistakes.
Olenka Villarreal is the CEO of a San Francisco Bay Area-based nonprofit called the Magical Bridge Foundation. The Magical Bridge Foundation raises money to build accessible playgrounds across the world, with the original Magical Bridge playground opening in Palo Alto, California, Olenka’s hometown, in 2015. Olenka founded Magical Bridge because the youngest of her two daughters has limited mobility and is nonverbal. Olenka had fond memories of taking her older daughter, who does not have a disability, to a playground when her older daughter was a little girl, and she hoped the same thing would be the case for her younger daughter.
Unfortunately, the same playground Olenka’s older daughter loved playing at was not built to accommodate her younger daughter’s disability. Olenka worked with other Bay Area parents and the Palo Alto government to find a playground that accommodated her younger daughter. There turned out to be no playgrounds both in the Bay Area or all over the world that accommodated people like Olenka’s younger daughter. Therefore, Olenka and her friends decided to build their own playground in Palo Alto to set an example as to what can happen when play structure designs do more than what the ADA calls for to accommodate people with disabilities.
Leanna Namovic is a Programs Director at Disability Empowerment Center and has a doctorage in occupational therapy. When she was a toddler, Leanna received an illness that left her with residual paralysis. Leanna was inspired to study for an OT degree from her experience with her schools’ lack of accessibility, and she has used her voice to speak out about what got in the way of her education. While she was studying for her OT degree, Leanna helped with a needs assessment for a fully accessible water park near St. Louis called Spirit of Discovery, which is still under construction. Just like Magical Bridge, Spirit of Discovery’s plan includes more accessibility elements than the ADA calls for, based on the experiences of people who visited properties that complied with the ADA, but were still not accessible. Leanna also pointed out accessibility flaws at the Together Center, the building that the Disability Empowerment Center’s Redmond office is located in, such as the lack of a push button and inaccessible signage, which have since been remedied.
Andrea Kovich is a Senior Accessibility Specialist at Studio Pacifica, a Seattle-based accessibility consulting firm. She studied architecture in college and has been consulting with architects on how they could better design buildings and properties to be more accessible since 2011. Andrea is also a certified ADA Coordinator, which means that she spent a lot of time studying the complexities of the ADA. Particularly she studies the ways in which the ADA was compromised as a result of not accommodating every disability. Andrea believes that in order to address the design flaws that too many architects without disabilities leave in their projects, design teams need to invite people with disabilities to join them so their voices are not left out.
Beckye Frey is a Principal Planner for the City of Redmond’s planning department. Twenty years ago, Beckye acquired a disability that impacted her mobility. She faced a lot of accessibility challenges, such as her scooter not being able to fit through the door because her scooter is wider than what ADA guidance suggests for doorways. As a result, she has been working with the City of Redmond on community design-based projects for the past five-plus years. One example of a City of Redmond project that Beckye is involved with is to build accessible and affordable housing for the more than 200 adults with developmental disabilities who work at Microsoft’s headquarters. In her work, Beckye noticed a lot of design flaws across Redmond, such as a parking garage not having enough clearance for an accessible van, and the sidewalks not being accessible enough. Beckye also shared that she and her fellow City of Redmond teammates are committed to building relationships in the community well before their projects so they can implement community advice whenever necessary. She recommended reaching out about accessibility concerns as soon as possible, since it takes years to develop architectural projects, and accessibility is not often thought about before construction begins.
One common message that all four panelists attempted to convey in this webinar is that ADA guidelines are not enough in terms of accommodating people of all abilities. Olenka points out some of the common features of playgrounds that ADA guidelines often let slide, such as tanbark that is not accessible to wheelchair users, transfer platforms that people with mobility impairments can pull themselves onto but do not help them use the whole playground and a lack of fencing that keeps people from walking into the streets.
Leanna praised the Together Center for thinking their accessibility through, but the contractors still got away with not installing a push button because the ADA allowed them to.
Andrea chose to make accessibility consulting her profession because of her experience with inaccessible design, as well as her realization that there is no requirement for architects to understand why the ADA is necessary.
As a key stakeholder in the City of Redmond’s design planning, Beckye has been working alongside her colleagues to ensure that Redmond develops their own codes to close the gaps in the ADA, as well as advocate for some Washington State anti-ableism laws, so that everyone can access what Redmond has to offer.
Later in the webinar, each panelist shared their thoughts about the backlash that the City of Seattle’s highly anticipated Overlook Walk received upon opening. The Overlook Walk’s signature descent from Pike Place Market to the Seattle Waterfront has just the right amount of steepness to include a ramp. However, what is actually there are stairs, which wastes the opportunity the City of Seattle had to make the Overlook Walk accessible for mobility aid users. The Overlook Walk does include an elevator, but it is behind the iconic descent to the waterfront, and it is impossible to view Elliott Bay from there. As the founder of a playground who carefully thought through how everyone could use it regardless of their age and abilities, Olenka pointed out that the Overlook Walk’s design flaw is not just bad for people with disabilities, it is also bad for people with strollers. Leanna observed that by moving forward with the design they went with, Seattle did not prioritize input from people with disabilities like Beckye is doing in her City of Redmond job. Andrea revealed that she has recently joined the Friends of Waterfront Park Accessibility Advisory Committee, and that there was a lot of discussion about the Overlook Walk’s design flaw in the meetings she attended. Specifically, Andrea informed us that there were no people with disabilities in the group of people who decided what the Overlook Walk should look like. In addition to suggesting the City of Seattle should have implemented disability input into the initial sketch like she does with the City of Redmond, Beckye sees the Overlook Walk as a great example of what not to do when designing property. Beckye also imagined running a test at the overlook walk where subjects used different mobility aids on the Overlook Walk just to evaluate how inaccessible it is.
The Americans with Disabilities Act did wonders to make the designs of buildings and properties much more accessible than they were before 1990. However, there is still a lot of work to be done in making sure people of all abilities can not only access public structures but also be included and welcomed by them. All four panelists know what it is like to see design flaws that very few people think about, that impact their, or their loved ones’, ability to have the same experiences as people without disabilities. Nevertheless, our panelists knew there was potential for design teams to better include people with disabilities, so they decided to get involved with design themselves so that their personal experiences could be brought into the picture. Olenka used her experience as a mom of a person with a disability to scrutinize the designs of existing playgrounds and build her own playground that includes people of all abilities in ways that other playgrounds could not. Leanna’s experience with ableism in her schools led her to study Occupational Therapy in college where she acquired useful accessibility consulting skills that she transferred to her current job at DEC. By becoming an accessibility consultant, Andrea showed that she is motivated to find the flaws in the ADA and improve upon them before further damage is done. Finally, as a design planner with a disability from the City of Redmond, Becky Freye’s contributions are helping the City of Redmond become more accessible than what the ADA calls for, because she knows what it is like to be in people with disabilities’ shoes.
Links/resources:
Magic Bridge Foundation
Palo Alto Magical Bridge playground
Spirit of Discovery, planned accessible waterpark
Studio Pacifica
Seattle Overlook Walk
ADA Guidelines