Policy and Policy Development Archives

Landscape architects lead the way

Image from the Arcadia report showing seating decorated with a shape of the shoreline. — Sandstone seating and Turpentine Ironbark timber. Corian detail shaped to reflect the shoreline of Sydney Harbour,

It’s fitting that a landscape architecture firm should tackle the topic of connection to Country. After all, they are the ones designing our outdoor spaces. NSW legislation dictates that Aboriginal heritage must be protected. Consequently, the responsibility falls to design professionals. It’s a means of enriching the built environment, and not just a legal necessity. So, it falls to landscape architects to lead the way.

A report by Arcadia Landscape Architects aims to show that engagement with First Nations people is not difficult. They are concerned that designers will unwittingly perpetuate the colonisation of space if they continue with established practice. As they say, it has to go beyond token responses of “ornamental recognition”. They add that engaging with First Nations people continues after the life of the design project.

The report aims to encourage the wider built environment industry to engage with First Nations people. The concept of Country is more than just land, water and sky. Country is language, family culture and identity, and is loved, needed and cared for.

“Arcadia emphatically rejects the softening of language when referring to British invasion and processes of colonisation. It is a trend for these processes to be referred to as “arrival” and “settlement”, however the softening of language perpetuates myths of terra nullius and denies First Nations people their history and suffering endured.”

The report covers:

- - Approach and a note on language
  - How to engaging with Knowledge holders
  - Engaging with Country, which has 5 steps and examples
  - Engaging with Industry
  - What to do when you can’t engage
  - Where to next? includes conducting cultural training

There is a list of references and further reading at the end. The title of the report is, Shaping Country: Cultural Engagement in Australia’s Built Environment.

Arcadia collaborated with Budawang/Yuin researcher and spatial and cultural designer Dr Danièle Hromek and Yuin woman Kaylie Salvatori, Arcadia’s Indigenous Landscape Strategist, to develop this research report.

The NSW Government Architect’s Better Placed document has a section on Connection with Country.

There are more articles on landscape architecture in the parks, open space and playspaces section of this website.

Inside out for mental health

The 1980s saw a turning point for people with mental health conditions. Reagan and Thatcher declared that the asylum model was dead. Australia soon followed suit with this idea. But what to do instead? And what could be done with these huge Victorian building complexes? A facility in Toronto, Canada, came up with a great idea, which was quickly copied in South Australia. Jan Golembiewski explains how the place was turned inside out for mental health.

Golembiewski writes a short story about the Toronto experience in the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health. Similarly to many institutions it took up a considerable amount of land. Urban Strategies won the contract to redevelop the whole site. It involved removing high walls and extending local roads into the site. So, in effect they were turning the facility inside out.

The design incorporated outward facing units which were connected to the urban grid. The open space then became shared space. Patients run a cafe which has some stories to tell according to Golembiewski. He says the people on the street are just a little more colourful. Mental health professionals are ready at hand to keep an eye out generally. The project has turned out to be good for patients and the community.

The title of the article is, Turning the City Inside Out for Mental Health, and the Canadian facility is the Center for Addiction and Mental Health. It’s an easy and interesting read.

Buying power of people with disability

Are marketing people missing out on a buying power of people with disability? The answer is likely, yes. A Nielsen Report on consumers with disability, including older people, states what is obvious to anyone interested in universal design and inclusion. “Disabilities span across age, race, and gender so there is reason to believe consumers with disabilities should not differ much from the general population.” So what is the buying power of people with disability?

The report, Reaching Prevalent, Diverse Consumers with Disabilities found that one in four households of their sample group of 86,000 people had one or more person with a disability. That’s an important statistic because consumers with disability are higher spenders in some categories. That’s despite tending to have lower incomes.

Marketing and advertising people will find insights into disability and their significance in this report. For example, consumers with disability are more likely to have a pet. So they are more likely to buy pet food and related products.

Marketing departments influence what is designed – it’s their job to find out what to sell. If marketing professionals dismiss people with disability, their company will too. An inclusive marketing approach helps the cause of inclusion albeit with a profit focus.

This report is also featured on the Silver Blog which is focused on marketing to older people. There is another item on the dangers of marketing specifically to older adults as this borders on ageism. Older people want brands to focus on needs and interests, not their age.

The title of the report is Reaching Prevalent, Diverse Consumers with Disabilities, and was published in 2016. However, the content remains current. The graphs are from the Nielsen Company report.

Inclusion, Human Rights and the Market

How can we attain our rights within a market-based economy, when those who do not experience social and economic exclusion have the the power of the market in their hands? The cost of inclusion is often said to “cost too much”. This is illustrated in the proposed changes to the NDIS. Cost is also the argument some states are using to stall the implementation of accessible housing. Human rights do not feature in these arguments.

In Western societies, justice and fairness are not inalienable rights, but a negotiated process based on mutual advantage. According to Mutual Advantage theory we have to be pragmatic about human rights in a market-based economy. The excluded need to bring a benefit to the negotiating table. Rights get enacted only after a cost-benefit analysis has been carried out and “the excluded” are assessed as being “affordable”. That is, “can we afford to include them?”. This is the wrong question. It should be, “what does it cost to exclude people?” And who is listening to the position of the excluded?

Market economists rarely reside in the excluded group fighting for rights. Measuring disadvantage and exclusion is not something they find easy to measure. Yet they do have a cost to individuals, society and the economy.

For more on this discussion, see my paper from the 2014 Brisbane Housing Forum. The content is once again current. It includes an explanation of Mutual Advantage Theory by Lawrence Becker.

PDF document Housing Forum Brisbane 2014

Word document Housing Forum Brisbane 2014

Reference: Becker, L.C., 2005. “Reciprocity, Justice and Disability”, Symposium on Disability, Ethics, Vol 116 No.1, University of Chicago Press, p 9-39.

Mapping how something gets built

Virginia Richardson ran a workshop at the UD 2021 on mapping how something gets built. Although local government is not the designer, it has many responsibilities for the project from start to finish. The question for the workshop was, how can we embed universal design in the process?

Virginia began with a graphic showing an example of the number of stakeholders involved in house building.

This concept was developed further in the workshop. It showed how many people get involved in a building project from a local government perspective.

A linear machine picture has lots of coloured post it notes on it depicting all the people involved in building a park project. — Slide from the workshop

Virginia’s slides include the Draft Universal Design Policy and associated documents for the Mornington Peninsular Shire Council.

There are more presentation slides and published papers on the UD2021 Universal Design Conference page .

Planners can play a leadership role

Post-COVID infrastructure projects are injecting life into economies around the world. So this is an opportune time to infuse universal design into all construction projects. Planners can play a leadership role in taking a universal design approach. But how will planners take the lead if it is not being taught?

An article in the American Planning Association online magazine, Viewpoint, challenges educators to get up to speed with universal design. The author says it is time for justice in the built environment, and universal design is the way to go. However, designers have not embraced this concept. But perhaps the momentum is shifting.

The title of the article is, Why Planning Education Should Embrace Universal Design. The author concludes,

“Some of the strongest forces on earth — economics, policy, politics, and a pandemic — will change the way we plan for the rest of the century. … formally teaching Universal Design at the university and professional certificate level is one of the best ways to guarantee that good planning rises organically from the diverse and unique needs of end users.”

Non-disabled planners and designers are yet to understand that they are designing for their future selves. One day, they will need universal design. By then it will be too late. The time to act is now.

Designing for Di sability Justice, an essay published by the Harvard Design School, discusses the issues. Access standards are a barrier to design – they limit imagination. It’s more about completing a checklist and offsetting liability than design. Then it’s seen as limiting design and something to be tacked on. A change in thinking is needed so that universal design is tackled as a challenge not a chore.

A decent home is a human right

New Zealand has taken a human rights approach to housing in its proposed housing guidelines. The draft guidelines circulated for comment late last year contain no specific design features. Rather, the draft is based on a set of explicit values that a decent home is a human right. The use of the term ‘decent’ is grounded in the Treaty of Waitangi and the impact of colonisation.

The guiding value is that a home is “more than a shelter, bricks, mortar or a house”. It also means a village, relationships and responsibilities to place, people and the natural environment. Consequently, the guidelines mean a decent home is a warm, dry, safe, accessible, and healthy home. The right to a decent home also takes account of the historical, social, economic and legal context in New Zealand.

The private sector is expected to play their part in implementing decent homes. Human rights are not just government business, and that universal design has a role to play:

“One way for individuals, communities, government and the private sector to implement the UN ‘decency’ housing principles is to promote universal design. Universal design advances inclusive, accessible, healthy building and environment and respect for cultural diversity. It considers people throughout the life cycle from childhood to old age, and is alert to different scenarios, including disability.”

The inclusion of first peoples in the construction of the guidelines contrasts with other countries and their housing policies.

UN Conventions cited

The draft guidelines are underpinned by New Zealand’s obligations to several UN Conventions, which it lists as:

– Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
– International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966)
– Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965)
– The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979)
– Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)
– Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2008)
– UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007)

There are 19 Guidelines in total each with a rationale, history and context. The document is 37 pages but easy to read. There is also a Word version on the New Zealand Human Rights webpage together with an overview of the guidelines.

What is Easy Read and who needs it?

page from Access Easy English on COVID. Writing for readers. — ***Example of Easy English***

Easy Read is a good example of how less is more. But conveying messages in fewer words is more difficult than writing more words. Easy Read is for people with low levels of literacy. It’s mostly used for essential information such as health alerts and legal terms and conditions. Writing with minimal words is a skillset of its own. It’s not easy. But it does make you think about what you really need or want to say.

Proficient readers can use Easy Read versions to get the take-home message quickly and easily. That’s also why it’s universal design – it’s for everyone. However, Easy Read is not the same as Easy English – the example in the image. It has even fewer words and focuses on actions not just information. Cathy Basterfield says that Easy Read is not simple enough for some people and explains this in a simple poster analysing the difference

Easy Read not the same as plain English or plain language. Complex documents such as research reports are beginning to include a plain language summary. However, these require an average level of literacy. They are usually presented as a paragraph or a list of sentences in dot points. Easy English drills down further to the key words and concepts. The techniques include:

- - a lot of white space
  - directly relevant illustrations (not photos) to convey the meaning of the text
  - short words and sentences
  - minimal punctuation
  - positive phrasing
  - bullets to separate items in a list.

Editors can learn from Easy English

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading blog has a more detailed article. It summarises Cathy Basterfield’s presentation at their annual conference. She shows how editorial professionals can learn from Easy English.

Blog writer, Anna Baildon, said she learned a lot from the session and had her assumptions challenged. She said she could see “the links to plain English but it goes further”. The headlines she remembers are:

- - It’s hard to write in Easy English
  - Access to written information should not be a reading test. It should be enabling
  - Unpacking the language so the meaning becomes accessible.
  - Access to information is a right. ‘Access’ means that a person reads, understands and knows what they can do.

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading has a guide to Editing in Plain English.

Many people need it

More than 40% of the population has low literacy skills. In some remote parts of Australia and in institutions it is higher than this. There are several reasons why so many Australians need information in easy to understand formats:

– acquired disabilities
– lifelong disabilities
– poor educational outcomes
– psychiatric or mental illness
– dyslexia
– early school leavers
– older people
– different cultural backgrounds
– hearing impaired and/or people from the Deaf community

Accessibility and universal design needs to be considered at the outset of any project, not as an afterthought. Information formats such as brochures and websites are no exception. Some important government documents include an Easy Read version, but this is still rare.

Cathy Basterfield has pioneered much of the work on Easy English in Australia. People with high level literacy skills can grasp the key points with little effort. And there are times when people with good literacy skills need help. For example, the stress of a court hearing can temporarily affect one’s reading skills and level of understanding.

Cathy Basterfield presented a paper on this topic at the Australian Universal Design Conference, UD2021. There is a related post on choice of typeface or font for easy reading. Cathy has an Easy English blogsite that explains more. She did a lot of work for COVID-19 too.

There is an Easy Read version of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Bumpy Road website is a good example of Cathy’s work for interacting with the justice system.

Accessibility with help from Standards

The ISO Guide 71 eleven goals of accessibility. — Slide showing the 11 accessibility goals.

Who wants to refer to the instruction manual if they can avoid it? In the same way, standards documents get overlooked unless it’s mandatory to comply. But there is one standards document that is worth looking at. It can help us progress accessibility and universal design. On day two of UD2021 Conference, Emily Steel explained how the international accessibility standard works.

Emily Steel pointing to the 11 Goals of the Guide on the presentation slide. — Emily Steel with the 11 Goals of the Guide.

The international standard has done all the thinking for us. The document guides standards committees as they write and update standards for their specific industry or profession. It is also useful for any committee developing guides or standards for accessibility and universal design. So, we don’t have to re-invent the wheel.

The Guide’s use of the the term “accessibility” relates closely to universal design. “The extent to which products, systems, services, environments and facilities can be used by people from a population with the widest range of characteristics and capabilities to achieve a specified goal in a specified context of use”.

The Guide has two main parts. The first describes user needs and 11 accessibility goals. These are similar to the 8 Goals of Universal Design. The second describes human characteristics and abilities, and design considerations.

Guide 71 was adapted by the European standards authority and is titled, CEN-CENLEC Guide 6. It is basically the same information. You can see a previous post about this document.

There is also an Accessibility Masterlist by Gregg Vanderheiden. It’s a collaborative resource for understanding access features in digital applications. Also worth a look.

All standards should ensure they meet the goals of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Guide 71 shows how to do this.

Microsoft renews commitment to accessibility

The ‘disability divide’ is only set to get wider. So it’s good news that Microsoft plans to to be more accessible and inclusive. That includes their workforce culture as well as accessible technologies described in their Inclusive Design Toolkit. Microsoft’s commitment to accessibility includes people with disability in their action plans.

According to an article in an IT industry magazine, Microsoft plans to increase training and recruitment of people with disability. It plans to use industry collaboration and recruitment across GitHub, LinkedIn and Microsoft Learn communities. Suppliers are another group they are targeting for creating a culture of accessibility.

In 2019 Microsoft produced an Inclusive Design Toolkit. Their key advice is to recognise exclusion, solve for one and extend to many, and learn from diversity. You can download the toolkit in sections. it has case studies and videos.

The magazine article is titled, Microsoft pledges to bridge ‘disability divide’ with renewed commitment to disability, has more detail about the use of AI in software.

Good that companies that promote inclusive products and services are realising they need an inclusive workforce.

Category: Policy and Policy Development

Landscape architects lead the way

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Inside out for mental health

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Buying power of people with disability

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Inclusion, Human Rights and the Market

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Mapping how something gets built

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Planners can play a leadership role

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