Noble County looking to boost accessibility of area sites for people with disabilities
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The Noble County Convention and Visitors Bureau has launched an initiative designed to bring more accessibility and inclusivity to sites throughout the county for people with disabilities.
Bridging Barriers is starting with a survey of those who manage sites and attractions in Noble County, as well as one for residents and visitors to get an understanding of what the current needs are.
“We know that while many of our partners—our assets, nature spaces, restaurants, event centers—desire to serve everyone equitably, it can be a challenge when they don’t necessarily know the landscape,” Visit Noble County CEO Grace Caswell said.
Caswell said the goal is to enhance the county’s community assets to ensure that people with disabilities or have special needs can be engaged.
“It’s something that when a visitor comes into our community they need to know so they can book the correct hotel, so they can have their dinner reservations at the right restaurant that fits their needs,” she said. “We realized that there was a gap of knowledge, so we wanted to start with a survey. It’s not about shaming anyone. It’s about understanding what our current accessibility map is, for lack of a better term, and what wins we have in the community.”
The surveys will be open through at least March 31 on the CVB’s website. Caswell said the organization is looking at a variety of community spaces, including outdoor recreation areas, restaurants, hotels, retail shops, museums, and Chain O’Lakes State Park.
But, she noted the effort goes beyond just physical sites.
“We’ve also made some meaningful updates to our website so that our website could be more user friendly for those with visual and hearing impairments, to try to get to that higher standard, so that everyone, whether they are color blind or need some audio captioning because they have difficulty hearing that they’re able to utilize our website,” Caswell said.
The CVB has partnered with locally owned Catchy Creations LLC to implement a digital accessibility widget called UserWay AI on its website to achieve those goals.
“UserWay AI is a tool that helps website visitors interact with web content,” Lori Gagen, owner of Catchy Creations, said in a news release. “With the widget, users can navigate and interact with an accessibility dashboard and tailor their experience for specific conditions, such as ADHD, dyslexia, visual impairments, and more. They can increase text sizes, change colors and contrast, and more to help improve the online experience.”
The CVB cites 2023 population data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which says about 5,000 people in Noble County under the age of 65 have a disability. About 8,500 more residents are aged 65 and older.
Caswell says the early feedback from the program has demonstrated a lot of excitement, both from site managers to residents.
Once the surveys close, Caswell said the organization will compile the data and share it with community partners and the various sites across the county.
“We’re going to, high level, say, ‘These are the overall fines of this study,’ but then also have one-on-one consultation opportunities with individual sites that were called out that we were able to gather enough data from, so that they have informed data so that they can make the best decision possible for their organization,” she said.
The goal is to identify barriers to accessibility and find ways to overcome those barriers. Once those barriers have been found, the CVB plans to connect local sites and organizations with potential funding opportunities to implement their solutions.
“Accessibility and universal design are what’s best for everyone, but sometimes there’s a cost associated with it,” she said. “For some of our smaller museums, our free nonprofits or services, it might be difficult for them to make those upgrades on their own. So our plan is to then shift so that we can all work together on our goals as a county, but then also individual communities and individual places to be able to have better knowledge so they’re equipped to actually tackle the challenges. And part of that equipment, having the tools, means funding.”
The project is being funded with a $10,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Noble County through the AWS Foundation Accessible Communities Fund.