Author: Jane Bringolf

Canadian City Parks and Inclusion

A path wanders through a dense woodland. It has a fence of heavy timbers on each side of the path. Canadian city parks go for inclusion.The amount of space required for physical distancing due to COVID-19 highlights how valuable our public space is. An important point raised in the 2020 Canadian City Parks Report. Parks form a critical backbone of community infrastructure particularly in times of stress. However, not everyone feels welcome and respected in public space. There are systemic inequities related to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability. So more parks and open streets aren’t the answer to these issues, particularly at this time of a pandemic. 

The City Park Report can also be read as a guide with sections with five themes:

Each theme has an Overview, Data, and Stories. The report is based on 25,000 responses to the Park People‘s 2019 report.  

The Inclusion section begins with the issue of homelessness and displacement. Not something usually thought of under this heading. However, they have some interesting responses to this issue from a parks perspective. People with disability get a separate sub-section. And, of course, as usual, this topic appears at the end of the report. 

Nicely presented, but fiddly to access, back and forth for the different sections. The Executive Summary provides an overview of the report.

A separate study, Participatory planning for the future of accessible nature, extends the thinking in this report. Available from Tanfonline or request a copy of the paper on ResearchGate. 

 

Easy Read Website

A screenshot of the homepage of the website.You might have heard of Easy Read or Easy English for documents. They are great examples of how to reach a wide audience of people regardless of their level of literacy. Now there is a great example of an Easy Read Website from Women with Disabilities Australia.

People can have low literacy skills for several reasons such as a brain injury through a stroke or accident, or a cognitive condition. People with English as a second or other language, and people not used to navigating websites also find Easy Read helpful. So we are not talking about a few people.

This particular website is focused on girls and women with disability. However, the information is good for boys and men as well. Large clear font, graphics, short headlines and few words make this easy to navigate. At the top of the page is a link to turn Easy Read off. But this doesn’t mean lots of words in tiny font. Also very easy to read. 

The tabs list key topics: Your Rights, Lead and Take Part, Life Choices, Sex and Your Body, Safety and Violence. The also have a section on the other accessible functions of the website. It includes other languages, screen readers and Auslan. 

At last someone is living the message and has truly joined the dots between people with disability and website design. 

Accessibility begins at the beginning

A graphic with logos of popular social media platforms.Social media platform designers beware. If you “forgot” accessibility for everyone, you will soon be reminded. Then it’s too late and costs more to fix. Costs include lost customers. Twitter found out the hard way when launching “audio tweets” according to a blog article on UX Design. Saying it is an “early version” does not improve the matter for would-be audiences.

It seems Twitter doesn’t have a dedicated accessibility team and that’s where it should start. You can’t tack it on at the end. It’s not the cherry on top, it has to be mixed in with the other ingredients and baked in.

A boy sits in a dark room with three computer screens. He is wearing a headset.The blog article also discusses Naughty Dog, a game developer that has considered just about everyone. That is, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people who are blind or have low vision, and people with mobility or motor control issues. Their website has a list of accessibility presets.

There’s also a link to a page on how accessibility features assist search engines. Video transcription, image captioning and image descriptions (alt-text) are just the start.

The title of the article is, Digital accessibility matters: Social media is amplifying the need for a clear, empathic approach to accessibility.

The Whole Journey: A guide

Passengers are getting on a train in Perth. There is a yellow plate that covers the gap between the platform and carriage.In response to a second review of the accessible public transport standard, the Australian Government produced a whole journey guide. In-depth consultations and workshops underpinned the guide’s development. Here are some key points about the Transport Standards from the guide:

    • There is a focused effort to remove discrimination from Australia’s public transport systems.
    • They provide certainty of Disability Discrimination Act responsibilities, as well as a focus on a customers, and liveable communities.
    • Access upgrades require local council co-ordination, real time information about accessible routes and transport, starting from the home.
    • They were too prescriptive, cobbled together from other standards, focused on minimums, with no understanding about transport related issues.
    • Accessible transport is an enabler, promoting age-friendly cities, with walking as an ingredient. Hence the need to look at the whole journey, requiring quality footpaths, kerb crossings, and pedestrianisation.

picture of two Sydney buses side by side waiting at traffic lights.

Download The Whole Journey: A guide for thinking beyond compliance to create accessible public transport journeys from the Department of Infrastructure website.

There’s a good section on universal design that shows how it captures other terms.

“The principles of universal design can also be applied to the design of programs run by government, businesses and non-government organisations. This will result in greater efficiency by maximising the number of people who can use and access a program without the need for costly add-ons or specialised assistance.”

All state and territory transport ministers endorsed The Whole Journey Guide in 2017. In depth consultations and workshops included disability advocacy organisations.

The guide is for policy makers, planners, designers, builders, certifiers and operators. The aim is to encourage thinking beyond compliance and focus on accessibility across the whole journey. 

 

Blinded by science: Universal design and data access

The figure of a woman is overlaid with purple and pink computer coding in tiny writing forming a backdrop.It’s all very well saying that information is available to everyone, or that government processes are designed to be transparent. But how many people can access the scientific and long-winded sentences in these documents? Even the abstract below on this very topic needs interpretation into everyday words. It’s easy to talk about universal design. However, academics often make research on accessibility and inclusion inaccessible and exclusive. How about more walking the walk, and talking the talk? We need universal design for data access.

The article on Open Government Data Through the Lens of Universal Design is about accessing data sets. This might include population census data, or data that underpin policy decisions. By casting the lens of the seven principles of universal design over the data sets the authors found ways to improve accessibility. Nine issues were found, three related to the web and the rest to data presentation.

This is an important aspect of inclusion. It helps people with disability and others to see how data are used, and to give them a voice. Information is power. The article includes recommendations for discussion on how to improve the situation.

The article can be downloaded from ResearchGate where you can request the full text from the authors. Otherwise it is available on SpringerLink where you will need institutional access for a free read.  Note the dated use of the term “special needs”.

Abstract

Open Data are increasingly being used for innovation, developing government strategies, and enhancing the transparency of the public sector. This data is aimed to be available to all people regardless of their abilities, professions and knowledge.

Research is showing, however, that open data, besides being physically inaccessible to people with special needs, those are also semantically inaccessible to people who lack data science expertise.

In order to identify specific accessibility challenges associated with open government data portals and datasets, we conducted an analysis using seven principles of Universal Design.

In total, nine challenges are identified based on issues discovered. Three challenges are identified on the web portal interface level, namely: dataset filtering and categorization, access using a keyboard, and breadcrumb and back navigation.

The other six challenges are identified on dataset level: dataset previewing, dataset size, dataset formats, dataset purpose, dataset labelling, and dataset literacy. For each challenge, we propose recommendations as a means to incite a discussion about the features that open data should possess in order to be widely accessible, including people with disabilities and those lacking data science expertise and knowledge.

Digital Accessibility: It’s not an add-on

A graphic showing a laptop with a green screen and several smart phones around it also with green screens. It is indicating that they are all connected.Beware digital consultants who offer a range of services “plus Accessibility services”. If they list it as a separate service then it is likely they don’t truly know what it is. Why? Because accessibility should be built-in regardless. It’s not an added extra. But it is specialised.

As Sheri Byrne-Haber says,
“Just because you are good at one does not make you good at the other”. If you say you are good at both it implies you don’t understand the business drivers for either.

In her article Byrne-Haber lists some other mistakes commonly made by consultants:
1. They assume that you can wave a magic wand over people and turn them into accessibility testers.
2. They rarely employ people with disability, but outsource to disability services and pay them a pittance for their knowledge.
3. They tell people they can do every type of accessibility testing in their contact messages.

Byrne-Haber also points out that digital accessibility specialists will be in demand as disability discrimination legislation gets tighter. Big tech companies are already on board with an increasingly diverse workforce. But you do need to know what questions to ask. The list of questions to ask is in her article, Vetting Accessibility Vendors.  

 

UDL in Occupational Therapy Education

A young man with crutches walks through a door held open by a clinician.Occupational therapists work with just about every human condition you can think of. Their clientele is diverse, but are their professional teaching methods suited to a diverse population? This question is the subject of a new article from the United States.

The article reports on a survey of occupational therapy (OT) educators. They found that while most respondents knew about Universal Design for Learning (UDL), less than half could define it. 

The article discusses how the respondents fared with the three tenets of UDL: multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression. They found that OT assistant education used some UDL techniques such as games, feedback and incentives. These strategies were not evident at higher education levels. 

OT educators focus is on ensuring all content is delivered. That’s because the content covers such a broad spectrum and is subject to accreditation standards. However, the American Occupational Therapy Association has identified research priorities to find teaching methods that maximise learning for practitioners.

The authors sum up that with the recent pandemic the “need for a greater understanding and implementation of UDL tenets is more important than ever.” It will ensure today’s students become competent practitioners.

The title of the article is, Implementation of UDL in Occupational Therapy Education. It is open access.

Abstract: This exploratory research surveyed educators’ use of universal design for learning (UDL) in occupational therapy education. Most common methods of engagement were displaying enthusiasm, providing examples, and offering learner feedback; representation was primarily offered through class discussion, lab experiences, and images; methods of action or expression were most frequently class discussion, projects, practicums and tests. The type of program, years of educators’ clinical experience and faculty rank influenced some factors of UDL implementation. Further use of UDL principles that could facilitate improved learning outcomes of diverse learners within occupational therapy education is discussed.

A short article by Bethan Collins looks at both sides of UDL – for OTs and for clients.

The Caring City: Inhabit not Inhibit

View from high building in Brisbane overlooking building roofs and the Brisbane river and bridges. Jacaranda trees can be seen in the street.A caring city is one that understands the dynamic relationship between individuals and their surroundings. But are our cities caring or careless in their design? Carelessness makes cities uncomfortable, ugly and dull, with traffic movement taking priority over pedestrians. This extends to a multitude of steps and stairways making access difficult or impossible for some. 

Charlotte Bates argues that we need more caring in our cities. Her book chapter is a discussion based on three case studies that illustrate ways to configure care in the design of urban environments. The examples are of an open space, a hospital complex, and a housing estate.

In each example, people are have the opportunity to come together or to retreat into private space. Intimacy and spontaneity are encouraged so that “caring spaces enable connections to be made”. As Bates says, the notion of caring design challenges the designs based on property-led narratives.

black and white photograph of an open terrace at the top of a building. It has a row of stretcher beds facing out to the view.The title of the chapter by Bates, Imrie and Kullman available on ResearchGate is, “Configuring the Caring City: Ownership, Healing, Openness”.  Or you can directly download a PDF of the document. 

A second chapter titled Designing with Care and Caring with Design looks at designers as carers. The authors examine the intersection of design and care and how it is expressed in design practice. Understanding care from this broader perspective is another way of understanding universal design. It shows how universal deign is an attitudinal concept rather than resolving inclusion issues in the design process. 

The book is published by Wiley.

Book contents

  1. Designing with care and caring with design. Rob Imrie and Kim Kullman
  2. Age-inclusive design: a challenge for kitchen living. Sheila Peace
  3. Curating space, choreographing care: the efficacy of the everyday. Daryl Martin
  4. ‘I don’t care about places’: the whereabouts of design in mental health care. Ola Söderström
  5. The sensory city: autism, design and care. Joyce Davidson and Victoria L. Henderson
  6. Configuring the caring city: ownership, healing, openness. Charlotte Bates, Rob Imrie, and Kim Kullman
  7. ‘Looking after things’: caring for sites of trauma in post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand. Jacky Bowring
  8. Empathy, design and care – intention, knowledge and intuition: the example of Alvar Aalto. Juhani Pallasmaa
  9. Architecture, place and the ‘care-full’ design of everyday life. Jos Boys
  10. Ageing, Care and the Practice of Urban Curating. Sophie Handler
  11. Caring through design: En torno a la silla and the ‘joint problem-making’ of technical aids. Tomás Sánchez Criado and Israel Rodriguez-Giralt
  12. Design and the art of care: engaging the more than human and less than inhuman. Michael Schillmeier
  13. Afterword: Caring urban futures. Charlotte Bates and Kim Kullman

Inclusive environments and universal design

Rob Imrie and Rachael Luck provide a philosophical essay on inclusive environments, rehabilitating the body and universal design. In this essay they bring the discipline of occupational therapy to the discussion. The essay published in 2014 still has relevance today as changes in housing design are still slow to come. The title is, Designing inclusive environments: rehabilitating the body and the relevance of universal design. The essay is an introduction to the chapters that follow in this special issue of Disability and Rehabilitation. 

Accessible Tourism – Is that Inclusive?

Martin Heng sits in a chair and there is an elephant closeby. He fist-bumps the elephant's trunk. ant using its trunk.There’s a growing realisation that accessibility does not equal inclusion. Getting in and out of somewhere is only the beginning. Being able to participate on an equal basis requires inclusive thinking and design. This includes the tourism sector. Being accessible is not the same as being inclusive.

Martin Heng, formerly of Lonely Planet, has an article in New Mobility that addresses this issue from a tourism perspective. He argues that the term “Accessible Tourism” is unhelpful. It has helped identify a market segment in economic terms, and some operators are on board. But it only goes so far. Change is slow and piecemeal. 

Heng’s article is titled, “It’s Time to Move Beyond Access to Inclusion“.  He concludes his article by saying we need to go beyond market segment ideas. We need to encourage the tourism industry to adopt an inclusive mindset. 

Language and labelling is important. Choosing the right terms can make a big difference. “Accessible” is strongly linked with disability – particularly wheelchair users. “Inclusive” makes us think more broadly – families, people from diverse backgrounds, children and older people. 

There are more articles and guidelines on inclusive tourism on this website.

Image courtesy of New Mobility showing Martin Heng interacting with an elephant.

Biophilic Design is for everyone

A workbench with computers overlooks a waterfall and stream. People are looking out of the window. Biophilic design is for everyone.Biophilic design is about the health and wellbeing of building occupants. So is universal design. Biophilic design is receiving interest in design disciplines, but buildings also need to be inclusive. Otherwise the biophilic aspects are lost.

An article by Andrew Heaton in Sourceable discusses some of the studies of offices, hotels, schools and other public buildings. Natural light, natural materials such as timber, and living plants make people feel better. Students study better and hotel guests appreciate the extra sense of comfort. And it goes beyond views from a window. Sounds of nature, textured material, direct sunlight, and natural patterns all have an effect. 

There’s more in this article, including a link to a study on biophilic design in the workplace. 

It is no surprise that being able to look out at nature and water views effects wellbeing. If it didn’t, homes, hotels and offices would charge a premium for them. They are in demand because people prefer them, even if they don’t know why. 

The title of the article is, Why You Need Biophilic Design on Your Next Project.