Measuring Community Receptivity Using the Community Health Environment Checklists

The Community Health Environment Checklists are objective measurement tools designed to assess the accessibility of the environment in terms of architectural, physical, and social elements. The overall premise is can a person with a disability get into a site, do what they need to do to participate, and get out. Three versions of the checklists have been created to address the needs of individuals with mobility and sensory impairments (hard of hearing and low vision). The CHECs were developed with direct input from people with disabilities through key informant interviews, cognitive mapping, and focus groups. The CHECs were not designed to be used for litigation purposes but to provide communities with useful information to facilitate change and improve participation of people with disabilities in a community. The CHEC-Mobility consists of 21 features, the CHEC-Low Vision includes 18 features, and the CHEC-Hard of Hearing version has 19 features. The CHECs have been used in several communities to assess the accessibility and receptivity of a variety of sites. The scoring system of the CHEC provides the capacity to achieve a total destination site score for multi-destination site comparisons as well as scores for features across-destination sites. The scoring is scaled so a site receives a score from 0-100 with a higher score indicating a higher level of accessibility and receptivity. The results from the CHEC assessments can be used to create Google Maps of communities.