Accessible CU Works to Make Businesses and Community Spaces Inclusive for All
by Áedan Knee-Mueller, The Daily Illini / May 12, 2026
Since launching in 2022, Accessible CU, a partnership between the College of Education, Community Choices, and Experience Champaign Urbana, has helped evaluate businesses and community spaces for accessibility for people with physical, cognitive, and sensory disabilities. The Daily Illini took a look at their work and how they’re developing more tools to help inform and assist those with disabilities.
The University of Illinois has earned itself a reputation as a leading example of an institution shaped by accessibility. Where permitted, the grounds have been cut, sloped, smoothed, or raised to meet the needs of students with physical disabilities, bringing brilliant minds into the classroom instead of leaving them at the doorstep.
However, with any culture comes its critiques, and for some at the University, there is still much to be desired from communal efforts in addressing residents’ needs.
Terri Reifsteck, vice president of destination branding and development for Experience Champaign-Urbana, in collaboration with Emily Tarconish, teaching assistant professor in the Department of Special Education, has organized a way to collect information about accessibility around Champaign-Urbana. Accessible CU evaluates businesses for their physical, cognitive, and sensory accessibility.
Together, Reifsteck and Tarconish have built upon a rubric system devised by Community Choices, a nonprofit organization that promotes disability education and welfare for people with disabilities.
This rubric asks volunteers over 200 yes or no questions about the conditions inside a business: noise, brightness, seating, and more. The collected data is sent to the College of Education for evaluation, then displayed in the directory, where users can search for their preferred amenities and accommodations.
“Barriers in the community are designed for able-bodied minds,” Tarconish said. “(Disabled people) have things we’re going through; it just so happens that environments aren’t built for us.”
According to Tarconish, an app is in development in cooperation with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Though there is no official release date, it would provide users with convenient access to both the directory and the rubric, allowing them to submit their own evaluations.
Reifsteck said the purpose of lending students the ability to evaluate places of business is to identify areas where they could adapt.
After the directory’s launch in 2022, Accessible CU standardized its process, specifically looking to address needs outside those stipulated by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“As a disabled woman myself, we’re not struggling with anything,” Tarconish said. “We’re just trying to use this project to inform the community, ‘Hey look, here’s the needs that you might not have thought of that we have.’”
This is an excerpt from an article originally published in The Daily Illini. Read the full story here.