More than twenty years ago the various levels of government committed to an upgrade of Toronto’s waterfront area. The Waterfront Toronto organisation was formed at that time. Since then parking lots and derelict buildings have given way to distinctively designed neighbourhoods. At the end of 2023 the Waterfront Accessible Design Guidelines were published.
“A key part of Toronto’s waterfront revitalization is providing safe, easy and enjoyable access for everyone to the shores of Lake Ontario.”
The Guidelines aim to go beyond minimum compliance and refer to many other guidance documents. For example, street design, pedestrian crossings, and cycling infrastructure.
An accessible waterfront
The section on the Waterfront covers docks and piers, gangways, canoe and kayak launching, and recreational fishing nodes. Boardwalks, pedestrian bridges, and water’s edge all receive attention. The Wave Deck is an interesting feature – more of an art installation than a place to walk or wheel. It is described architecturally as “whimsical” and inspired by the undulating shorelines. Because of the design, a separate and level path of travel is provided.
Liveable communities
The focus of this section is on the design of streets, play spaces, seating, and wayfinding. The advice for streets without kerbs is to have different surface finishes for the different zones. However, it is not clear how people who are blind or have low vision can negotiate these streets. This section does not include housing developments.
Being forced to work from home during a pandemic is very different to choosing this mode of work. The pandemic showed us that we could work from home successfully and employees want it to continue. This is the outcome of some recent research shows many people are happier working from home. And for some, working from home is the only real option.
“While some of the health evidence about working from home is mixed, overall it shows giving workers the flexibility to choose to work from home can be good for their physical and mental health.”
An article in The Conversation explains the subtle but important differences working from home makes to peoples lives. Time saved in the commute means more time for short active trips. Researchers found that snacking increased, but the quality of the snacks improved. Mental health improved when employees were supported by colleagues and the organisation. Concerns over team work, connection and attachment mean that a hybrid model works well.
Good for some, necessary for others
Workers with disability favour working from home for obvious reasons. Not having to worry about access to transport, the built environment, and workplace design. When you factor in the fatigue and pain experienced during a commute the benefits are compounded. But it’s not just people with physical disabilities that benefit. People who are neurodiverse are better able to manage their health conditions as well.
Women, especially mothers and caregivers, reported improved wellbeing. The added flexibility enabled them to balance paid employment with unpaid caregiving.
Giving employees the choice to work from home at least some of the time during the week is a step forward in the equity stakes. Flexibility gives people with disability of any age the opportunity to compete more equitably with others. And it’s not all one-sided – employers benefit too.
Statistics capture many important measurements which are reported as facts, but who chooses what to measure and how it is measured and counted? If the lives of some people are left out of the research questions their facts become invisible. So researchers in the Netherlands took up the issue of inclusive data collection. The project was about mapping the inclusive city by engaging people with disability as co-researchers.
Improving the relevance and quality of research beyond statistical approaches, requires the involvement of community members with ‘the problem’. Image from Heeron Loo’s website.
The research team, including people with disability, explored issues of accessibility in urban spaces. The digital map-based tools worked well and provided insights into accessible locations. However, it is not known if these locations are welcoming and inclusive. The notion of inclusion within places mapped needs a new design thinking cycle for all researchers.
Mapping accessibility is a different endeavour to mapping inclusion, and this research team has opened up the potential to find ways to map inclusion. Accessibility is an essential first step. Getting around is one thing, feeling welcoming with a sense of belonging is another. Urban design features and the attitudes of fellow citizens have an important role to play.
Traditional social research methods are discouraging of involving people with (intellectual) disabilities. This is largely because of governance issues relating to ethics committees. However, participatory research methods with people with disability are more acceptable. The article outlines the participatory research method emphasising the equal participation of all parties involved in the process.
From the abstract
Given the lack of collaboration with people with disabilities in (spatial) decision-making processes, our aim was to develop and test a method that allowed for the involvement of people with disabilities in community development, and in particular in mapping accessibility and inclusivity in various places and spaces in the city of Groningen (the Netherlands).
In this project, we collaborated with an organization that provides housing and care for clients with acquired brain injury, deafness with complex problems and chronic neurological disorders. We describe our approach and experiences in participatory research, focusing on the opportunities and challenges in developing and implementing a data collection method that enabled us to involve people with a disability as co-researchers.
Accessibility at bus stops
A research paper from Chile takes a similar approach. Instead of conducting a physical access audit, the researchers asked people about their bus stop experiences. It is another way of finding out how well access standards promote inclusive environments. Getting to and from the bus stop and boarding and alighting the bus all have to work together.
The researchers conclude that legislation and standards are insufficient to overcome gaps in this part of the travel chain. Consequently, people with disability are not afforded equal conditions.
This research is part of an interdisciplinary work that seeks to study universal accessibility for people with mobility impairments from different perspectives. From Engineering, it is important to highlight the relation to the dimensions of the space used, while in Occupational Therapy, it is relevant to include the perceptions when participating in the occupation.
The results contribute to the lived experiences of people with disability. They reveal the barriers, challenges, and opportunities that influence successful participation in mobility in the community. In conclusion, there is a lack of regulations regarding the characteristics of spaces. The perceptions of people with mobility impairments must be brought into the design to guarantee the right to move in equal conditions.
Why do some people appear unable to take in what is happening around them in an emergency? Being able to act quickly requires a good sense of the situation. However, not everyone has a sense of emergency awareness. Consequently they find decision-making difficult and fail to act appropriately. A Norwegian study has investigated a universal design approach to mitigate this lack of awareness.
In an emergency, sight, hearing, use of hands and ability to concentrate can all be impaired. Smoke, dust, cold, noise and paralysis from fear can affect anyone’s ability to think clearly. Smart phone apps are a good way of reaching people quickly with important information, but do they account for likely cognitive and physical changes?
The issues and solutions for “situational disability” are outlined in a technical paper from Norway. It raises our awareness that individuals are likely to behave in unexpected ways during a disaster. With an increased rate of climate-based disasters, and the move to digital information systems, this is a timely study. The underlying concern of how people respond is an important one. The paper shows that universal design principles can guide the way in compensating for a lack of emergency awareness.
The full title of the article is, Towards Situational Disability-aware Universally Designed Information Support Systems for Enhanced Situational Awareness.
Emergency Design: Designing as you go
Designing FOR an emergency IN an emergency requires a different design approach to existing tried and true methods. When urgency is the driver of design, processes and methods need a re-think. COVID-19 is a clear case of designing for an emergency during the emergency. So how can “designing-as-you-go” be done?
Designs for emergencies, such as wars or an earthquake, are usually devised before the event. Or they are designed after the event in preparation for future events. The COVID pandemic arrived without notice and few countries were prepared. Hence the need to design for the emergency while it is happening.
A different approach
A case study from Brazil shows how a totally different design approach was required. Rather than using standard methods the researchers took an organic approach to the problem. It was basically designing on the run. The process encouraged the inclusion of people who are often marginalised. While history tells us that Brazil is has not fared well during the pandemic, the study still has value for future situations.
Their approach is based on qualitative techniques. They relied on the knowledge of local people and processes of working together in a horizontal rather than hierarchical format. This approach also allowed participants to see how they could deal with the current situation as well as improvements for the longer term.
“As a path, we point out the importance of identifying areas of convergence of interests, the creation of win-win policies and the daily encouragement of a culture of collaboration at the differing levels.”
The title of the paper is Design amid Emergency. It charts what they did, how they did it and what they learned from the process. Identifying areas of common interest and developing win-win policies to encourage a culture of collaboration was key. In summary, they found the co-creation design process the key to success. It can lead to improved quality of life in both the short and longer term. It also helps to embed resilience within the population.
The government saw the value of co-design with citizens. It remains to be seen if they actually follow through on this networking approach to solving issues.
From the abstract
This article presents the process for the “Design of services under the COVID19 emergency social protection plan”. It was drawn up by a team of researchers and designers from Porto Alegre in collaboration with the Porto Alegre City Government. The focus was on the provision of essential benefits to homeless and other vulnerable people during the pandemic.
The process was developed for the designers involved: without prior notice, within very short time frames and completely remotely, using only digital platforms. As such, the process was developed to respond to the emergency and amid the emergency. The objective of the article is to discuss how to design amid emergency.
The experience was guided by the methodological principles of action research and research through design. In addition to presenting the design results solutions aimed at the short, medium and long term. This article highlights the need to aim for the recognition of difference, the suggestion of alternative views, social innovation, the systemic transformation of society and sustainability.
Making walking and wheeling more inclusive is the aim of the Walking for Everyone Guide. At 122 pages the online guide sets an ambitious and inclusive agenda for the future of walking across diverse communities. Community-led engagement is important to ensure changes meet the needs of residents. This is how you get local place-based needs met – there is no one-size-fits all.
Walking is often ignored in transport policy. Even when it is, the budget allocation takes it from the top of the hierarchy to the bottom. Consequently, basic elements like footpaths are not delivered. Despite almost every journey beginning and ending with walking and wheeling, streets are not inclusive.
Valuing and promoting lived experience enables transport planners to understand different experiences especially where they conflict. The Guide reminds us that solutions will sometimes require compromise, but marginalised groups should come first. After all, their needs will improve experiences for other walkers.
The Guide presents a framework of recommendations targeted national and local governments. There are three key themes:
Improving governance, planning and decision making
Creating better places for everyone to walk and wheel
Supporting everyone to walk and wheel
Each of the themes is dealt with in detail. In Theme 2, Creating better places, they tackle road safety, air quality and physical severance by roads. In the UK, cars are allowed to partially park on the footpath in narrow streets, but Living Streets recommend this practice end. This is because it often limits the movement of people using assistive mobility devices.
Close the mobility gap
A key point in Theme 3 is to close the mobility gap by making walking and wheeling inclusive. This includes ensuring everyone who needs a mobility device can get one. These devices include assistance dogs, personal assistants and support workers as well as equipment.
The Guide is well presented with attractive photographs depicting a diverse population of pedestrians. It includes a socio-economic context and next steps which is a call to action for government, business and community sectors to work together. There is a useful list of reference documents at the end.
Living Streets Scotland also has a useful Tools for Inclusion publication. This one is a guide on devising an Equality Impact Assessment at local government level. The report looks at the use of Equality Impact Assessment in delivering the obligations of the public sector to address the inclusion of people with disability. The findings of their study show there is still a long way to go. The report has several useful recommendations.
What if you could turn your slide notes into automatic subtitles during your presentation? That would be good for everyone. The advantage is that you can write out the presentation and then deliver it perfectly without having to use lots of text on your slides. As you give your talk you click through the subtitles (captions) in the same way as you click through your slides. Best part, this subtitles for slide shows tool is free from the Cambridge Inclusive Design Team.
The audience gets a better experience with the actual words, because there’s no reliance on speech recognition and no time delays.
Presenting from pre-made subtitles is great for presenters who are prone to lots of ‘ums’ and ‘ers’. It’s also good for speakers who:
Have to give a presentation in a language other than their native language
Have a quiet voice, or substantial accent
Need to customise the length of a presentation to an exact time slot
Want to make a video of their presentation
Have to deliver a presentation that was written by someone else
How do the subtitles work?
The Cambridge Subtitles for PowerPoint tool splits the text in your slide notes into short subtitles and adds these to the slide as animated text boxes. The tool adds a new toolbar to your ribbon which adds subtitles to your slides from the slide notes. The tool is offered free until the end of 2024 and available separately for Windows and Mac. You can download from the links on their webpage.
The UK has an ambitious target that 50% of journeys are walked or cycled by 2030. However, for some groups the quality of footpaths is a major deterrent to walking. According to a Living Streets report, 48% of older adults say they would walk more if footpaths were better maintained. Their fear of slips, trips and falls is enough to put them off. And there is a health cost for this – not just the falls, but the lack of incidental exercise.
The number of trips and falls due to poor footpath maintenance is difficult to establish due to lack of data. Living Streets has done their best to gather what information there is to find out the state of play.
Hospital admissions and insurance claims are two obvious sources of information, but even this is patchy.
Pedestrian falls happen to people of all ages, but as people age they are more likely to fall and to sustain an injury. As a consequence they are more likely to find themselves in institutional care.
One finding is that the number of hospital admissions from pedestrian falls was three times the number from pedestrian-vehicle crashes. So, if we had better data on pedestrian falls, it could change the priorities for road maintenance spending.
The Living Streets report uses 10 observational case studies to gather more information on footpaths and falls. In the UK vehicles are allowed to park over kerbs onto the footpath. This not only blocks the path of travel, it degrades the quality of the footpath. Local authorities had different ways for people to lodge complaints about footpath maintenance.
Can things be improved?
The bottom line is that budgets decide priorities, but whose budget? In the UK, falls cost the national health service more than $2.3b per year. This figure is set to rise as the population ages. However, the focus of this cost is falls indoors and unreported falls outdoors is still a problem. Using proxy figures, Living Streets estimates there could be more than one million outdoor falls among older adults each year.
The role of road strategies and plans
In the UK, the Highways Asset Management Plan allows for local authorities to claim they they taken reasonable care to make sure the road was not dangerous to pedestrians. Is this still valid in 2024? The focus on the cost to highways is not accounted for in the cost of hospital and social home-based care. Both these costs are borne by local authorities yet there is no connection between the two.
The problem with trying to apply the classic seven principles of universal design everywhere is that they don’t apply universally. This becomes apparent in an article about ethics and the workplace where some of the principles cannot apply. The seven principles are to help people think about inclusion, not use them as a checklist.
Equitable Use
Flexibility in Use
Simple and Intuitive to Use
Perceptible Information
Tolerance for Error
Low Physical Effort
Size and Space for Approach and Use
A paper published in Journal of Business Ethics explores the seven principles in relation to workplaces and people with disability. It soon becomes clear that it isn’t that useful especially if trying to apply all seven. Consequently, businesses will struggle to apply the seven principles and likely discouraged from taking action.
No matter how much universal design thinking goes into making workplaces inclusive, there will always be jobs that some people cannot do. The aim is to find or create jobs that suit people with different disabilities. That’s where ethics come into play.
In the article, the authors argue that inclusive and ethical workplaces involve both organisational and spatial choices. The key is cross-fertilization between organisation studies and universal design. This will improve understanding of the ethical issues when thinking about including people with disability in the workplace.
Cross-fertilising organisational and spatial studies with a universal design approach allows for more ethically sound and inclusive workplaces. This is useful for discovering what is possible and what is not. This also requires abandoning any notion of a perfect productive body. We are all collectively vulnerable and interdependent within workplaces.
Abandoning the Notion of a Perfect and Productive Body
Universal design invites organizations to rethink inclusion in the workplace, neither as a special accommodation nor as a recognition of the specialness of impairment. Disability is a natural and ubiquitous condition of being human.
Rethinking inclusion at work
Universal design also prompts a paradigm shift from deficit to diversity. The focus shifts to embracing the needs and abilities of all workers and ensuring equal opportunities for participation. The scope of universal design also encompasses all facets of organisational structure and power dynamics.
This paper examines the ethical issues of the inclusion of workers with disabilities in the workplace. It takes a cross-fertilization approach between organization studies, the ethics of care, and universal design.
It explores how organizations can use universal design to develop more inclusive workplaces. First by applying universal design principles to workspaces. Second by showing how universal design takes understanding of inclusion from the workspace to the workplace.
The paper discusses the ethical challenges and complexities of applying universal design across diverse organisation and industries. Finally, inclusion requires abandoning any notion of a perfect, productive body. Therefore, we share vulnerability and interdependence in the workplace.
The Dubai Universal Design Code covers everything you need to know about accessibility in the built environment. It’s a good example of joining dots between the accessible built environment, accessible transport and wayfinding. This is a very detailed document and appears to be a collation of standards documents from around the globe.
This document brings together all the elements of the Australian access standards with those that are missing but also essential. Under the three headings of built environment, transport and wayfinding are details of every design feature.
Built environment
The section on the built environment covers the usual elements such as ramps, doors, and sanitary facilities. In addition, it includes details such as glass surfaces, tables and chairs, and window hardware.
Public spaces
The section on public spaces is about urban design, pedestrian crossings, parking bays, restaurant terraces, construction works, bus shelters, and playgrounds. The buildings section includes a note for gender equality, stages and backstage, hotel rooms and mosques. Housing is included in this section along with libraries, schools, laboratories and car parking buildings.
Transport
The transport section includes details for urban buses, metro trains, trams, marine vessels, school buses, accessible taxis, and accessible websites and apps. Service details are covered with signage, seating, announcements, fares and ticketing. Accessible taxis have their own sub-section including vehicle design, and pick up and drop off points.
Wayfinding
The wayfinding section has a similar amount of detail: typography, symbols, layout and line spacing, Braille, and tactile maps. There are more than 300 pages to this document which indicates the level of detail. The document includes 3 annexures: drawings, anthropometrics, and required accessibility for each building type.
The Dubai Universal Design Codeis in plain English language and as such it can serve as a basic design guide to check for forgotten details on any project. A valuable contribution to the literature on standards, codes and guides for accessibility in one document.
Expo 2020 Dubai – a review of accessibility
This study gathered the experiences of people with disability and accessibility experts at the Expo 2020 with a view to making future large events accessible to all. One of the findings is that the efforts of access consultants was patchy because they were not involved from the start of any project. As a consequence, it was not possible to correct design errors.
While the provisions for people with disability were better than expected, they were incomplete or disconnected. Some lessons for the 2032 Brisbane Games?
Event management is a growing sector in the tourism industry and one of the fastest growing industries in the world. The sector contributes significantly to global economies and provides substantial employment opportunities.
The objective of this paper is to contribute to understanding the accessibility of large events in an increasingly technology-dependent industry.
We evaluated the accessibility of the Expo 2020 in Dubai. Expos are attended by millions of visitors and showcase the latest technologies and innovation. These factors make these events the ideal breeding ground for the implementation of advanced technologies.
The study draws on data from observation, in-depth interviews and online, qualitative questionnaires. The participants are people with disabilities (PwDs), the organizations in charge of the accessibility of the Expo and staff that worked at the event—some of whom were also PwDs.
We discuss the experiences of PwDs at the event, the accessibility provision in place and the challenges and insights of accessibility experts involved, as well as the implications and recommendations for managing the accessibility of large events.
Taking a cognitive perspective to architectural design is something architect Berta Brusilovsky Filer is passionate about. So she has written a book about it, Evaluating Cognitive Accessibility. Her free book is open access with the help of La Ciudad Accesible with the hope of reaching more people.
Cognitive accessibility is a fundamental aspect in the design of public spaces in the urban environment. At last this topic is receiving more attention in schools of design. The concept takes in easy reading, spatial orientation, signage and processes of interaction.
We rely on our brains to process information to make sense of the environment around us, but we don’t all process information in the same way. Consequently, if we design in a way that assists attention, perception, memory and problem solving, everyone benefits. Reducing cognitive load (too much going on) and maximising comprehension are key principles for independent movement around urban environments.
The book draws on the disciplines of architecture, social science and neuroscience, and presents an evaluation methodology for designers. However, it also provides a recent history of neuroscience and the role our brains play (or not) in making sense of things.
Lots of examples and photographs enhance this PDF publication. The chapter on recommendations covers the many elements of spatial orientation. The concluding chapter addresses the importance of involving people with cognitive conditions in the design process.
