Lake Saint Louis woman creates dozens of inclusive playgrounds

“For Zach and people like Zach, part of the fun is getting high. Part of it is experiencing that excitement,” she says.

Zach was born with Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease, a genetic disorder of the central nervous system that causes severe disabilities. He was confined to a wheelchair—which meant he couldn’t reach more than eight feet without a ramp—and although he could communicate, he was sometimes difficult to understand.

Zach died nearly three years ago at the age of 21, surpassing his life expectancy by six years. During his time as a child, he inspired major changes in the design and construction of inclusive playgrounds.

Mackay, 47, has a degree in recreation management. Although she did not specialize specifically in playgrounds, she focused on recreation for people with disabilities.

When Zach was born, she wanted to find out if it would be possible to build playgrounds for children like him and with other physical and mental disabilities.

“I first called five cities in St. Charles and asked if they had land I could build on if I raised the funds.

“Some cities said yes, which surprised me. I thought I’d better start a nonprofit and start collecting donations,” she says.

This nonprofit is called Unlimited Play and supports the construction of inclusive playgrounds across the country. She is the founder and executive director of the organization, which assists communities in designing the playgrounds, provides marketing recommendations, and helps with fundraising and applying for grants.

It took her four years to raise the funds needed to build her first accessible playground, Zachary’s Playground, in Hawk Ridge Park in Lake Saint Louis, where she lives. Unlimited Play was founded in 2003 and has since helped create more than 100 inclusive playgrounds across the country.

Mackay stresses that accessible playgrounds are truly inclusive, meaning they are designed for everyone. Children with disabilities can have fun there, but so can children without disabilities. The design elements that allow disabled children to go places they’ve never been and do things they’ve never done aren’t even noticed by other children.

Activities like musical instruments or control panels with knobs are at the same height as always, but in inclusive playgrounds there is room for a wheelchair underneath. And large disc swings provide enough space to lie down if the child can’t hold themselves up – and the angled ropes allow a wheelchair user to hoist themselves onto them.

The Americans with Disabilities Act sets a number of requirements for inclusive playgrounds, but Unlimited Play’s standards are much more stringent, Mackay says.

For example, the ADA allows the use of wood fiber mulch as a soft and safe ground cover, but wheelchairs and walkers get stuck in it and must be dug out. Unlimited Play’s playgrounds are instead designed with an extremely soft and unbroken surface made from recycled tires.

They also feature slides made from a series of metal rollers instead of the ADA-approved plastic slides. Plastic slides can build up static electricity, which can damage cochlear implants, Mackay says.

Unlimited Play’s playgrounds are surrounded by fences that help keep autistic children safe. Children with autism often wander or run away, she says.

And because children with autism often enjoy spinning and climbing on things, a soft climbing frame that rotates is a popular element. There is space in the middle where a child can lie down if they enjoy spinning but don’t want to climb.

Some features in an Unlimited Play area are as simple as a color change. A different color on a step to a slide makes it clear to visually impaired children that there is a step.

The slides also have metal handles on the side, making it easier for children to get from their wheelchairs onto the slide independently.

Inclusive playgrounds can cost anywhere from $200,000 to several million dollars, depending on the features, Mackay says, and prices have skyrocketed during and since the pandemic. That’s why fundraising is such an important part of her work.

The organization is working on its biggest project yet, a $7.5 million playground called Empowerment Park in Sacramento, Calif. “The playground is gigantic,” she says, and it includes a wading pool and restrooms.

Closer to home, the organization is working on a playground at Edgar M. Queeny Park in unincorporated St. Louis County west of Town and Country. Inspired by a boy with dwarfism, the playground is designed to accommodate children with shorter limbs, with more steps on the climbing sections, closer together, and more places to hold onto.

As of last month, the Queeny Park area was just missing a drainage survey by the Metropolitan Sewer District before construction could begin, but because costs have risen, another $80,000 is needed to complete it, she says.

It seems so small, but can mean so much. Some of the playgrounds Unlimited Play has helped build feature a series of metal bells that can be struck with a hammer.

“I work with a woman who is deaf, who was born deaf. She told me that she put her ear to a chime in a playground and could actually hear it,” Mackay says, explaining that the vibrations were picked up by the bones in the woman’s inner ear.