Critical Planning

The accessibility audit is a largely underutilized tool of disabled community engagement in the design process. This essay shares four case studies of accessibility audits facilitated between 2021 and 2024 for four separate groups of landscape architects, designers, and students. Its methodology is centered in disability justice and crip theory. In the attempt to illustrate how to conduct an accessibility audit by including direct participation of disabled stakeholders and disabled designers and experts, the goal is to assist the landscape architecture and urban design professions in deviating from the usage of sensitivity studies (or disability simulations), which are inappropriate, misguided, and outdated attempts at measuring site accessibility. In this way, designers and students might learn to prioritize disabled lived experience in the design process.