The Tikkun Project
Lesson
5
The Community Accessibility Audit
Concept
Inclusive design means intentionally removing physical and sensory barriers so that every person can access space and information equally.
Focus Question
How welcoming and accessible are the spaces in our broader community, and what can we learn from them before we look at our own school?
Knowledge & Understanding Goals
Social Studies, People and Environments: The Local Community, Strand B, B2.2: Gather and organize information and data about the local community, using various field research tools.
Social Studies, Strand B, B2.5: Evaluate evidence and draw conclusions about efficiency and inclusion in their neighbourhood systems.
Health and Physical Education, Active Living Strand A, A1.1: Apply skills to protect and support personal and collective safety, demonstrating an awareness of barriers in the immediate environment.
Thinking & Learning Skills
Research Skills (Systemic Auditing): Using structured observational criteria to hunt for hidden environmental barriers and existing access assets.
Learner Profile Connection (Principled / Thinkers): Students take responsibility for analyzing their immediate surroundings, recognizing that structural exclusion requires active, empathetic problem-solving.
Context
This lesson is deliberately a low-stakes practice run students build their observational skills and vocabulary for universal design at a facility that's already been designed well, before turning that same lens on their own school (Lesson 6), where the stakes are real and the findings will directly shape their proposal.
Lesson Outline
LEARNING THE THREE INSPECTION LENSES
Gather around the class mural map. Review the core text (Leviticus 19:14). Explain that students are acting as official Accessibility Inspectors, using three "Inspection Lenses" adapted from the Rick Hansen Foundation framework: the Seeing and Hearing Lens (Braille signage, large-print or audiobooks, closed-captioning, bright path markers); the Moving and Going Lens (wheelchair ramps, zero-grade pool entries, automatic door buttons, low water fountains); the Feeling and Thinking Lens (quiet zones, noise-cancelling headphones, weighted lap pads).
VISITING A HIGHLY ACCESSIBLE PUBLIC FACILITY
Take the class on a field visit to a highly accessible public facility (a library, park, or community centre). If possible, tour with a building manager or specialist who can point out hidden inclusion features (accessible change tables, inductive hearing loops). Student pairs use a clipboard and simplified icon checklist to document design choices that support inclusion, accommodations that help people join activities, and clear examples of missing features.
CATALOGUING WHAT WORKED
Back in the classroom, gather the clipboards and checklists from the field visit. As a class, build a shared "Universal Design Toolkit" chart, organized by the same three lenses: under the Seeing and Hearing Lens, list every specific feature the class actually observed working well (Braille signage, audiobooks, bright path markers); under the Moving and Going Lens (ramps, automatic doors, low fountains); under the Feeling and Thinking Lens (quiet zones, sensory tools). For each feature, ask: who does this help, and how did we know it was there?
NAMING WHAT WE STILL DON'T KNOW
Explain that this visit was practice — the class was learning to see accommodations that already exist, in a place designed with accessibility in mind. Ask: now that we know what to look for, what do we predict we'll find — or not find — at our own school? Record a few initial predictions, to be tested directly in the next lesson.
Notes for Teaching and Evaluation
The Rick Hansen Foundation's three-lens framework (Seeing/Hearing, Moving/Going, Feeling/Thinking) gives students a structured, repeatable checklist rather than an open-ended "look for problems" instruction — this matters for a first-grade audit, where an unstructured search would likely surface only the most obvious physical barriers and miss sensory or social ones.
Auditing a real, external public facility before the school itself gives students a positive model of what accessibility looks like in practice — they're hunting for solutions to recognize, not just problems to find, which shapes a more constructive audit of their own school afterward.
Deliberately not auditing the school in this lesson — even though students are clearly eager to — is what keeps this a genuine skills-practice lesson rather than a rushed first pass at the real audit; the Universal Design Toolkit chart built here becomes the actual reference tool students use during Lesson 6's audit, not just a warm-up activity.