Montgomery County has taken a forward step in civic design by releasing its new Accessible Design Guide, a roadmap for creating public spaces that everyone can navigate, according to an announcement from the Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT). The guide is aimed at ensuring streets, sidewalks, and crosswalks comply with accessibility requirements and embrace best practices, a move that County Executive Marc Elrich believes will simplify the process of including necessary accessibility features. "We want to do as much as possible to comply with accessibility requirements and to help our contractors and others understand the requirements and best practices," Elrich stated in the MCDOT release.
This guide, which can be found on the county's website, doesn't come out of the blue; it builds on a previous toolkit designed in 2021, specifically for visually impaired residents, while engaging with the community to amass input from a spectrum of individuals living with disabilities, caregivers, and service providers, ensuring the guidelines reflect the real-world needs. MCDOT's Chris Conklin explains, "Accessibility is regulated by law on many levels," and the created guide will serve as a consolidated resource for anyone involved planning, design and construction in public right-of-way areas, while also educating residents on accessibility best practices.
The guide is a testament to the county's commitment to inclusivity, constructed using a base of national and international research on best practices, refined sharply by the feedback from the local community with disabilities. The engagement process underscored the importance of hearing directly from those with diverse disabilities, such as ambulatory, vision, hearing, intellectual, and developmental challenges, thereby spotlighting critical improvement areas for safer and more efficient travel; information gleaned from those whose daily experiences often navigate a world not built with them in mind.
With over 91,000 residents in Montgomery County identified as having one or more disabilities, MCDOT's Matt Johnson notes the larger implications of these guidelines, saying to the county's website, "More than one in twelve residents in Montgomery County has a disability, and nearly all of us will experience a short-or-long-term disability at some point in our lifetime," revealing that such guidelines are more than a nod to the present, but an investment in the collective future where public spaces welcome all citizens, the ultimate aim of the guide is to ensure that we are accommodating everyone’s needs. Further information about the guide and MCDOT’s various programs and services can be found on their website, and residents can stay updated by following @MCDOTNow on social platforms such as X, Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram or subscribing to the "Go Montgomery!" newsletter.
