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For nearly a decade, Julie Pingston has been quietly shaping what accessibility looks like in Lansing, Michigan. What began with sensory-friendly programming has grown into something much larger, more embedded, and, as she describes it, “simply part of how the community operates.” It’s definitely something to be proud of.

Now, that work is expanding beyond venues and experiences and into the streets themselves.

A Walking Audit with Purpose

The newest initiative is a partnership with AARP Michigan centered around what is known as a “walking audit.” 

“This walking audit,” Pingston explains, “is a training on how to do a walking audit. This is what we’re calling a train-the-trainer.”

The concept is collaborative and practical. Teams move through a community together, walking and rolling through public spaces to evaluate how accessible they truly are. The goal is not just observation, but education and replication.

“It’s a team that goes through wayfinding, curb cuts, lighting, visual and audio cues, identifying barriers,” she says.

Rather than receiving a report from an outside evaluator, participants are immersed in the process themselves. 

“You’re going through with them,” she says. “It’s not that they just send you a report. You’re learning together.” This lived experience, instead of a report on paper, brings us one step closer to true understanding.

“The synergy of that one day, will spill out when everybody learns and takes that knowledge back to wherever it makes sense to implement. Some people might want to do that in their own neighborhood. Some people might want to do it along our river trail, or incorporate bike trails. It’s a very robust program.”

The Inspiration

Pingston has a reputation for prioritizing accessibility and inclusion, so she was excited when AARP Michigan reached out to her for this initiative. “It just makes sense with everything TravelAbility has been saying with the growth in the aging population and all of these amassing and overlapping needs as we move forward.” 

AARP connected with Pingston at just the right moment, on a call during last year’s TravelAbility Summit, when she was already in go-mode applying all that she was learning. Thanks to AARP’s online toolkit, getting started is easy.

From Awareness to Action

The audit examines the everyday details that can make or break accessibility.

“It will identify a lot of those things that are a hindrance to mobility,” Pingston says. “It could be that the crosswalk signals are not audio, they’re only visual. It focuses on lighting as well. Is it pedestrian friendly or not? Are there proper curb cuts? Are there visual cues or auditory cues missing?”

Some barriers are less obvious until you experience them firsthand.

“In our downtown, I can think of a place with large planters about a third of the way into the pedestrian path,” she says. “For someone with low vision or using a mobility device, these are an impediment. I don’t know how people don’t walk right into them.”

The audit also pushes communities to think more broadly about infrastructure.

“One of the things I want to cover is a road downtown that goes 45 miles an hour through a busy intersection near our convention center,” she notes. “How do we identify the impact on the walkability of the city, and then how do we elevate change?”

That question sits at the heart of the initiative.

“My goal is to have change affected by this,” Pingston says. “Not just identifying issues, but making sure we can point them out and have them addressed.”

What We Mean by “Walk” 

While the program is called a walking audit, Pingston is quick to expand the definition.

“I’m really trying to shift that,” she says. “Let’s think of people rolling, and walkers, and strollers, and everything that needs to move down this path.”

That mindset aligns closely with broader conversations across the accessibility space, particularly as aging populations and disability needs increasingly overlap.

How You Can Hop On Board

For destination marketing organizations looking to follow suit, Pingston emphasizes that the barrier to entry is lower than it might seem.

“Check out the online toolkit,” she says. “You don’t even have to sign up as an AARP member. You can go on and get the toolkit.”

From there, DMOs can scale up.

“If your community wants to do the bigger step, reach out to your local or statewide AARP to partner with them,” she advises. “There may be a grant for the facilitation process.”

The facilitator component, which Lansing is utilizing, helps deepen the learning and ensures participants know what to look for.

“I might know personally that something doesn’t look right,” Pingston says. “But there are things I don’t know. There’s so much value in doing it as a team effort and learning together.”

Building a Case for Change

One of the most significant outcomes of the audit is not just awareness, but documentation.

“It’s going to provide a documented resource that the community or the city can use as a tool going forward,” Pingston explains. “A lot of people know things anecdotally, but once you put it all in one package and say, this is how we can make this better, it becomes something people can prioritize.”

That shift from anecdotal to actionable is where real progress happens.

An Accessibility Champion’s Next Move

For Pingston and her team, the walking audit is one step in an ongoing journey.

“You never want to just be set with what you’ve done,” she says.

Future plans include expanding accessibility efforts into sports and education, building on Lansing’s strong foundation.

“We have a very vibrant sports commission,” she says. “So how can we take what we’ve done on the visitor and meetings side and transfer that over to sports? We’re a Big Ten university destination, so there are a lot of opportunities to connect with adaptive sports.”

At the same time, the sensory inclusive work that started it all continues to thrive.

“It has not wavered,” Pingston says. “Everyone we brought in is still engaged. We have not lost any of them. It’s become routine.”

And that may be her greatest accomplishment of all.

“It’s become routine,” she repeats. “This isn’t going to go away.”

For other destinations, that consistency offers both inspiration and a roadmap. Start with intention, build with community, and keep going until accessibility is no longer an initiative, but simply the way things are done.