The playground at the Ansonia Nature Center was demolished due to liability concerns in April after a child seriously injured his arm while playing on it.
Kids didn’t have to wait long for a new playground to enjoy — a Seymour company donated and built one at no charge within weeks.
But 10-year-old Shayla Kovacs is still waiting to play.
The playground is not fully accessible to children with disabilities — and city officials say changes to fix it won’t come until next spring at the earliest.
Shayla lives with spinal muscular atrophy type 2, and uses a wheelchair.
Shayla’s mom, Ryane Lee Kovacs, posted a picture on Facebook of Shayla and her classmates at the popular playground last month.
The picture shows a group of kids sitting at a table. Shayla sits in her wheelchair about 10 feet away — unable to join them because the ground is covered in woodchips, preventing her from moving closer.
A sampling of the comments:
“Heartbreaking.”
“So wrong.”
“Fix this ASAP!”
Also — it’s in violation of federal law.
Ryane Kovacs said that while she knows it would be presumptuous to expect everything to be fully accessible, the city’s oversight was surprising because it was new construction.
“We understand that not everything’s going to be accessible, especially things that are already there from years ago,” she said. “We were pretty disappointed to see this brand new playground go up in our neighborhood — that we can’t get into.”
The nature center itself was built in the mid-70s. The original playground dated to the early 90s.
Shayla and her classmates visit the nature center often, Kovacs said.
She said the nature center staff tries to accommodate for the building’s limitations. Many of the exhibits, for example, can only be reached by stairs.
“We’ve been going there for years,” Kovacs said. “There have been times in the past where they’ve brought things to her.”
So when the old playground was leveled over the summer, she was hopeful the new one would be more accessible.
It wasn’t.
City officials said it will be at some point in the future.
“We didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, we took what was offered for free,” John Marini, the city’s corporation counsel, said. “We understood that we were going to have to go the extra mile to make it handicapped accessible.”
Kovacs said she was surprised the project got built.
“I understand the circumstances, that it was donated, I just wonder how it got as far as it did without somebody noticing,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it’s written code.”
She’s right.
Violates Federal Law
John McGovern is the president of Recreation Accessibility Consultants, an Illinois-based business that helps municipalities and other groups comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, a landmark 1990 federal law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities.
The law gives federal civil rights protections to individuals with disabilities similar to those provided to individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion, and guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in public accommodations like playgrounds.
McGovern said Kovacs’ picture depicts an “instant ADA problem.”
“It looks like the portion or the surface that she is in her wheelchair on does not connect to the play area surface,” he said. “You have to have an accessible route that gets you to the play area surface and then you have to get on the play area surface.”
Other materials designed to “knit together” would work better than the woodchips used at the playground, he said. Or the city could try wetting the woodchips down so a person using a mobility device could use it on them.
McGovern said it’s a common issue.
“In the 200 city and town parks and rec systems that we’ve evaluated, that’s a problem for every single one of them,” he said.
So, more broadly, is accessibility when it comes to playgrounds in general, he said.
“Playgrounds are undoubtedly one of the most difficult environments to make accessible,” he said.
City officials said they’ll work on correcting the oversight.
But they can’t say when, or how, or what the price tag will be.
A Sept. 28 “conditions assessment report” on the nature center prepared by a New Canaan-based consultant lists $50,000 worth of accessibility improvements inside the building — but none on the playground.
Sheila O’Malley, the city’s grant writer and economic development director, said the report was being put together while the playground was being rebuilt.
The city will have an engineer take another look, she said, and draw up plans and a cost estimate over the next few months, with a view to implementing fixes come spring.
“The ADA issues will be addressed at the playground,” O’Malley said.
McGovern said Kovacs could sue for — and win — an easy judgment in federal court to punish the city for the oversight.
Kovacs that’s unlikely. She just hopes the city will be more conscientious moving forward.
“We’re not trying to get anybody in trouble,” Kovacs said. “It’s a little egregious, but it is what it is.”
