This toolkit is an abridged version of an article published in Critical Planning Journal, Vol. 28 (Summer 2025).

For comprehensive methodology on accessibility audits, utilized by Alexa and her collaborators, please visit eScholarship for the full article: Accessibility Auditing: Four Case Studies.

What are accessibility audits? How can you incorporate them into your design process?

Accessibility audits are a largely underutilized tool of disabled community engagement in the design process. The design process does not end with construction administration: we must test our designs by conducting accessibility audits with local disabled community members and experts. We need to begin to rethink how we assess site accessibility pre- and post-construction. Between 2021 and 2024, I facilitated four audits with different groups of landscape architects, designers, and students. The methodology I tested in these audits is centered in disability justice and crip theory.

Instead of conducting sensitivity studies (or disability simulations), which are often inappropriate, misguided, and outdated attempts at measuring site accessibility by non-disabled people, designers can conduct audits by directly including disabled stakeholders and experts to prioritize lived experience over assumption in the design process. [Check out The Insensitivity of Sensitivity Studies, an article I wrote for Ground Up Journal, Issue 10.]

Audit Materials
To conduct an access audit, I’ve utilized several materials, including ‘audit packets’ which are printed and made accessible to screen readers in Microsoft Word using simple, clear formatting and alt-text image descriptions. Generally, the packets include:

• the session title, date, time, and location to meet

• a list of field session leaders and contributors, and relevant titles or occupations, pronouns, and disabled identity (as applicable)

• a list of learning outcomes (for Continuing Education Units, or CEUs) if conducting for credit

• information on accessibility audits (definition, how and why to conduct)

• a selection of accessible and inclusive design elements to consider while on the audit
  (various, dependent on the specific design lens being applied)

• the schedule, with detailed timetables for travel to and between sites and while
  conducting each audit

• steps on how to conduct the audit

• a brief design history of each site to be visited

• simple route maps to match the schedule

• aerial images of each site to be audited

• space for notes and sketches

• a list of relevant resources and graphic resources

In addition to a printed packet (or a digital version by request), participants were given a clipboard and a tape measure to take measurements while conducting the audit. During some audits, we also had access to levels, which allowed us to measure slope.

All disabled session contributors should be compensated for their time. Sharing lived experience is a form of expertise and should be treated as a consultancy.

I owe many thanks to the generosity of so many collaborators across these four accessibility audits, to those who helped me to learn along the way how to best put our words into practice, and those who shared their incredible disabled lived experiences across four cities. I especially want to thank: Karen Braitmayer, Dr. Aimi Hamraie, Beth Thielman, Dr. Leann Andrews, Catherine Devereaux, Clareigh Ellis, Jill Moore, Ian Scherling, Andrea LaCour, Elaine Anderson, Justin Bishop, Sam Schuler and his dad Darren, Alma Silver, Derrick Behm, Richard Dougherty, and Jeffrey Mansfield.

Thank you also to all participants who were eager to learn how to integrate the disabled perspective and accessibility audits into their own practice! Accessibility auditing requires allyship and advocacy to make the work happen in real-life projects.