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Easter Seals Published Inclusive Design Guide

The Easter Seals Child Development Center Network has partnered with the Center for Universal Design to create a design guide for the development of universally designed child care facilities for children and staff of all abilities. This design tool provides information and strategies to ensure that child care facilities are welcoming and usable for everyone possible. This document will help architects, interior designers and early childhood practitioners create programs and facilities that support a diversity of users. Topics covered in the guide include:

• The principle of universal design
• Ideas for adapting existing facilities
• Ideas for creating new facilities
• Overview of types of disabilities and design tips for accommodation
• Resources

This document is intended to give you ideas and resources to make your child care facility, new or existing, more responsive to a broader range of users, from children, to staff, to parents and visitors, who may not have had access to child care facilities in the past due to physical, program or communication barriers.

The design guide and an accompanying financial guide for the inclusion of children with disabilities can be ordered for $10 each by going to

www.easterseals.com/site/PageServer?pagename=ntl_pqicc_design

or by contacting Bob Siegel, 312-551-7139, bsiegel@easterseal.org

Additional resources for including children with disabilities into child care centers can be found at Child Care plus+: The Center on Inclusion in Early Childhood. www.ccplus.org, which offers free and inexpensive resources including a Toys Tool Kit, The Tots'n'Tech Research Institute, tnt.asu.edu, which offers ideas and equipment for children with special needs, and The National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center, nectqs.unc.edu/topics/atech/atech.asp, which provided information on various topics.

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