Proposal:Playground Equipment

See also: Proposal:Extended playground equipment

The Feature Page for the approved proposal Playground Equipment is located at Tag:leisure=playground

Playground Equipment
Proposal status:	Approved (active)
Proposed by:	antonyking
Tagging:	playground=* Data item
Statistics:
Draft started:	2010-03-24
RFC start:	2010-03-25
Vote start:	2010-05-13
Vote end:	2010-05-27

Proposal

A set of tags to be used with leisure=playground to indicate what equipment exists in a playground

Rationale

This came about because of the difficulty in finding suitable play equipment in public parks for my disabled child. There are swings etc that are suitable, but no register of where they might be located. See also Accessible Play for the general project page for this and some background research. To me, OSM seems to be the obvious place to record where this adapted equipment is, and by extension, where other types of equipment is installed. It would allow parents to do a search of, eg 'playgrounds with lots of swings' or 'playgrounds containing 2 or more different items of accessible play equipment'

Examples

• 
  playground=swing, sitting_disability=yes Swing seat for inclusive play - allows a user with poor balance or posture to be seated on the swing
• 
  playground=swing, baby=yes Standard baby swing - bars are to stop baby escaping, not to provide postural support
• 
  playground=swing Standard play swing
• 
  playground=basketswing, sitting_disability=yes Basket/Wave/Hammock swing - note users normally lie down on this as opposed to sitting up on other types of swing
• 
  playground=swing, wheelchair=yes Swing for wheelchair users
• 
  playground=slide standard slide
• 
  playground=roundabout, wheelchair=yes Level access roundabout for wheelchair or buggy users
• 
  playground=swing, wheelchair=yes, walking_disability=yes Swing for wheelchair users or other disabled persons
• 
  playground=sandpit Sandpit
• 
  playground=zipwire Zipwire
• 
  playground=aerialrotator Aerial Rotator
• 
  playground=hopscotch hopscotch court
• 
  playground=springy Springy horse
• 
  playground=slide; climbingframe Play structure with climbing frame, slide, and steps
• 
  sensory=audible Equipment for creating sounds

Tagging

It would be useful to know the type, location and accessibility of the play equipment in a given playground. Therefore I propose the following schema.

Play Equipment

Each item of play equipment is tagged as a node, way or area depending on its shape and size, using a new key playground and one of the following values:

• playground=climbingframe
• playground=playhouse (wendyhouse in some regions)
• playground=basketswing
• playground=cushion (like a flat bouncy castle)
• playground=hopscotch a hopscotch court
• playground=roundabout
• playground=sandpit
• playground=seesaw
• playground=slide
• playground=springy (a seat on a helical spring)
• playground=swing
• playground=trampoline
• aerialway=zip_line
• playground=teenshelter
• playground=water (Archimedean screw and similar)
• playground=exercise See alternate suggestion on Proposed features/exercise point

For some of the more obscure items I've used the names given by the manufacturers for consistency.

For equipment falling into multiple categories, eg a climbing frame with a slide, where possible mark it up as a way with each part of the way tagged appropriately. If that's not possible, list all the values separated with semi-colons, starting with the value that most fits the item in question.

Sensory equipment is quite often integrated into other equipment, so the following values can be used in combination (or alone) to describe such things:

• sensory=visual
• sensory=tactile
• sensory=audible
• sensory=smell

Other Items

(note these are/should be tags in general use already; I'm not proposing any new tags in this list - just suggesting some that might be generally useful i nthe context of playgrounds)

Other common items in a playground such as:

• amenity=bench
• tourism=picnic_site - on a node, refers to a picnic bench. Note there is some debate at the moment as to whether one should use leisure=picnic_table instead - see Tag:leisure=picnic_table
• natural=tree
• amenity=waste_basket
• surface=* - grass, sand, rubbercrumb, woodchip etc

Descriptive tags

• baby=yes/no if the equipment is primarily designed for babies
• wheelchair=yes/no/limited if the equipment can be used by wheelchair users
• walking_disability=yes/no/limited
• sitting_disability=yes/no/limited if the equipment can be used by those who cannot sit
• blind=yes/no/limited
• name=* - of the equipment, not the play area.
• min_age=* Minimum age of the user in years
• max_age=* Maximum age of the user in years
• centralkey=* Where a key is required to access the equipment

The Perimeter

The perimeter of the playground would continue to be an area tagged as leisure=playground. Common supplementary tags are:

• operator=* - eg, the name of the local council or school
• name=*
• access=*
• barrier=fence for the perimeter
• barrier=wall for the perimeter
• barrier=gate for a node on the perimeter
• opening_hours=*
• wheelchair=* could also be used on the playground perimeter to show whether a wheelchair user could get into it; it shouldn't be taken to imply that the wheelchair user could use anything in the playground.

In addition, a new tag theme=* optionally to be used if the playground equipment has a common theme, eg:

• theme=adventure for all kind of "adventure"-theme like wooden fortress,
• theme=plastic for those fancy sites with tubes and sinks made of coloured resin and synthetics.
• theme=forest for playgrounds in the forest with features made mainly of timber or stone
• theme=sand for playgrounds with little more than a sandpit
• theme=water for playgrounds with water sources, drains, pumps, mud
• theme=accessible for playgrounds that are primarily designed for disabled children
• theme=visual with visual effects
• theme=tactile with taktile effects
• theme=acoustic with acoustic effects
• theme=??? with smelling effects (herbal gardens etc.)

Defining Relation between play equipment and the play area

It would be very helpful to associate the play area with the play equipment. To do this, use a relation as described in Relations/Proposed/Site. The relation should be tagged like this:

• type=site
• leisure=playground

and each piece of equipment, and the play area, would be members of that relation. This is to help reduce redundancy in the database, so the play area name etc doesn't have to be specified on every single item. It also allows more useful database queries to be made, eg identifying sites with more than one item of accessible equipment.

Applies to

Nodes or areas, as per the current leisure=playground tag. For playground=*, it may be used on ways as well, for certain types of equipment, eg zip wires or big slides

Rendering

Playgrounds currently are rendered as a seesaw icon on the Osmarender layer; on the Mapnik layer playground areas are rendered "swimmingpool" blue.

For leisure=playgrounds related to one or more playground=* items marked up with one of the disability tags, a seesaw with just one of the users shown as a stylised wheelchair user would be an appropriate icon:

Comments

Please use the discussion page

Note

In the UK at least, 'inclusive' is preferred to 'accessible' or other terms, as it implies that the item can be used by anyone regardless of whether they are able bodied or not. It also implies that a disabled person might be able to use it, not just have physical access to it.

Mailing list Request For Comments

• https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2010-June/050796.html

Voting

Place your votes here

• I approve this proposal. Obviously :-) Antonyking
• I approve of the work done in this proposal. Erik Johansson 16:33, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
• I approve of this --Minophis 17:17, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. - You integrated well a lot of the discussed stuff -- Dieterdreist 19:15, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. -- higa4 22:35, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. -- Al3xius 15:55, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. -- Ceyockey 16:37, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

How can this go through voting when there are questionmarks left in the text? --Lulu-Ann 16:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

well you put it there :-) I've dropped the ? from 'smell' as it's short, easy to remember and accurate; the 'hanging roundabout' I found that the manufacturer's name is 'Aerial Rotator' so I've updated it accordingly. Hope that doesn't affect anyone's vote. --Antonyking 17:06, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• I approve this proposal. Already using the tags and working on extras.--MrLemonCherry 20:00, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Lulu-Ann 13:33, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Kslotte 07:49, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --this is great;) --walley 14:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. MaZderMind 14:13, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --ChristianKnorr 17:04, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Friedel 21:00, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Bitsteller 21:15, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. -- johnwhelan
• I approve this proposal. --Eriks 13:35, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Skyper 22:35, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --User:NicolasDumoulin 8 June 2010

Approved

Well, that's a lot of +ve votes. Although the general schema is agreed, there are a number of types of play equipment that are unclassified (thanks Lulu-Ann for detective work on that!). As it's inevitable that more types will be discovered and/or invented, I think it best if I declare this proposal agreed, and have a section on the map features discussion page to agree on names for any new equipment. --Antonyking 20:59, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

See also

• Key:playground
• Proposal:Extended playground equipment – added 2023