Talking about inclusive built environments is easy, but how do you do it well? With different stakeholders involved in the design and delivery of a project, how do you get them to join up their thinking to approach projects with the same inclusive mindset? An inclusive building design guide focused on the processes is the way to do it.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) created an Inclusion Charter in 2020. One of their commitments was to embed inclusive design in all projects. But architects cannot work in isolation – all stakeholders need to take on an inclusive mindset. As an extension to their Charter, they created the Inclusive Design Overlayto the RIBA Plan of Work. It seeks to bring all stakeholders on board for every part of the project.
“The role our built environment has on each and every person’s life cannot be overestimated. This Inclusive Design Overlay provides a consensus across built environment professions for how we accelerate inclusion and value diversity.” Robbie Turner, Director of Inclusion and Diversity, RIBA.
Twenty-five different built environment professions provided insights and best practice content for the overlay. The inclusive design tasks apply to the client, project management team, design team, construction team and asset management team.
There are three core parts: the Client Team, the Design Team and the Construction Team. In addition, they recommend having an inclusive design consultant, or champion, with specialist inclusive design expertise. As Australian access consultants know, the earlier they are consulted the better. So it is good to see RIBA encouraging involvement from the outset of the project. The overlay also encourages the project team to look beyond building regulations.
Good design must be fundamentally inclusive just as it should be sustainable and resilient. Inclusive design should be elevated to the same level as sustainability.
The overlay details the roles of each team and stages of work. It begins with setting the project brief and budget through concept design, construction and handover to asset managers. There are separate sections for each of the key teams and what they should do and understand at each stage.
Enablers
The document includes a section on inclusive design enablers. These are actions that support the development of an inclusive design strategy, and implementation of inclusive design across the delivery of a project. Each sub-section has clear information on the diversity of the population and different levels of capability, and how to approach them in design and construction processes.
We all have to go sometime and some of us sooner and more quickly than others. The availability of clean public toilets can make or break a shopping trip or social outing. People with bladder problems will restrict their movements to where they know the toilets are. This is not just a social issue, it is an economic one.
The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design had a good look at this issue. Their report outlines how they went about finding an alternative model for high street toilets. The project was titled, Engaged: a toilet on every high street.
This design research project was about a simple concept of reusing vacant high street units as toilets (plus commercial or community space). It explored the idea before thinking about how to implement it.
The research explored how this idea would fit into current systems and infrastructure. People within retail, community safety, government and urban design were consulted. Then they spoke with council officers to see how they could make it happen.
Pub staff responsible for toilets talked about the problems with toilets. Public toilet provision is complex. A lot can go wrong. The aim therefore was to understand what the public want, what councils can achieve and where the pitfalls are.
The key areas or outcomes for Engaged were the issues of:
Closed and Temporary Toilets
Future Inclusive Toilets
Lootopia and the High Street
Toilets in the 24-hour City
Talk Toilets
The report explains these points in detail using case studies. Accessible toilets are included in the discussions as well as criminal behaviour.
Everyone needs a toilet
Everyone needs to use the toilet, and people shouldn’t be ‘designed out’. People who spend all day outside, such as rough-sleepers, rely more on public toilets than most. Yet privately-owned, publicly-accessible toilets may not be accessible to them, either from exclusion or from feeling that they would be permitted. Other groups who may feel excluded include teenagers and people of colour. Discrimination that associates groups with anti-social or criminal behaviour reduces the number of toilets that people can access.
The researchers found their findings match similar surveys by the Bathroom Manufacturers Association, and AgeUK London. ‘High streets’ was the main location where respondents thought public toilets were not good enough (70%), ahead of parks (47%). This data is useful for showing the value that public toilets bring to the high street. If people leave early due to a lack of toilets, that hurts businesses and the wider community. It also limits people’s participation and quality of life.
The title of the report is, Engaged: a toilet on every high street. The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design did the research published by the Royal College of Art. It is a good example of talking to stakeholders before even thinking about solutions.
Accessible toilets: how are they really used?
Accessible public toilets are constructed to a set standard in many countries including Australia. But has anyone actually asked users if they are truly functional for wheelchair users and others? Access Insight magazine gives an overview of new research into this question.
The UTS project focused on public accessible bathroom design. Falling off the toilet pan while reaching for toilet paper and avoiding public bathrooms altogether are two preliminary findings from the research project. Photo: Phillippa Carnemolla.
The current Australian Standard for accessible bathrooms is based on data from the 1970s with a few tweaks along the way. The design favours paraplegia who have good use of their upper body and arms. That means people with higher level needs are excluded from the design.
Apart from falling when trying to reach the toilet paper, users also need shelving near the toilets and sinks. We floors are unhygienic and a slip hazard when attempting a sit to stand transfer. Soap, paper towels, hand dryers, and toilet rolls are often placed in inaccessible positions. Or they can obstruct the grab rail.
The other key finding is how wheelchair users plan their movements outside the home to avoid needing a public toilet. Some would rather forgo social activities than be faced with bathrooms they cannot access.
Design policy and regulations within our cities can significantly impact the accessibility and social participation of people with disability. Public, wheelchair-accessible bathrooms are highly regulated spaces, but little is known about how wheelchair users use them.
This exploratory inquiry encompasses twelve interviews, delving into how participants utilise accessible bathrooms based on their functional needs.
Findings revealed themes of safety, hygiene, planning/avoidance and privacy and dignity. Many wheelchair users invest significant effort in planning for bathroom use or avoid public bathrooms altogether.
Regulatory standards don’t capture the ongoing maintenance and regular cleaning of bathrooms. However, this is critically important to the ongoing accessibility and safety of public bathrooms for wheelchair users. This points to a relationship between the design and the maintenance and the social participation of people with disability.
These findings can potentially drive innovative and inclusive approaches to bathroom design regulations that include maintenance. As such they can inform regulations, standards and design practices for more socially sustainable cities.
Everybody Poops
A Canadian briefing paper, Everybody Poops: Public toilets are a community issue, covers similar ground. Although these facilities are an important part of the community, local authorities are not keen to provide them. Solutions are around advocacy and partnerships. The paper has a link to The Safer Bathroom Toolkit, which has a focus on people who use substances.
Universal Design Guidelines: Changing Places
This set of guidelines comes from Ireland and aims to take the design beyond minimum standards. It covers every aspect you can think of from planning and building control to management and maintenance. The guidelines explain why some things need to be designed or placed in a certain way.
The design and installation section is comprehensive. The management and maintenance section includes pre-visit information, staff training, and health and safety. The guidelines are downloadable in different formats. Another excellent resource from the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design.
This design guide aims to improve infrastructure for people wanting to walk, cycle, scoot, and ride mobility devices. That means anyone and everyone who is not a driver of a motor vehicle. This is part of the ACT Government’s policy is to support active travel.
In the Canberra context, unless designated, all paths are shared by people walking, wheeling, cycling and using mobility aids.
Few people fully understand road rules, which is why design treatments must indicate that pedestrians have priority.
People using mobility devices and older people are given the label of “vulnerable” pedestrians. This is default language in transport jargon, but serves, unfortunately, to reinforce stereotypes. In reality, all pedestrians are vulnerable compared to motor vehicles.
When all pedestrians are incorporated into designs, we should just talk about “pedestrians walking and wheeling”. And with a Safe Systems Approach there should be no delineation between who is safer than whom.
Movement and Place framework
The Movement and Place framework together with a Safe Systems approach puts people into the centre of the frame. The lens has always been on vehicle traffic flows and the convenience and economics of reducing traffic delays. If we are to have active travel really happening, we have to re-think this priority.
The Design Guide is comprehensive and serves as a “how-to” tool for transport planners. It covers:
The Royal Institute of British Architects has updated their Access Audit Handbook in conjunction with the Centre for Accessible Environments. Access auditing is an evolving concept and means different things to different people. Some take it as being compliant with a standard while others consider aspects beyond compliance.
Fortunately, the Ergonomics in Design for All Newsletter explains the content of the document. In doing so, the newsletter provides an synopsis of some of the key concepts in the handbook.
Similarly to Australian Standards, British Standards only apply to people with disability and do not cover any other groups in terms of access and inclusion. This is despite other groups who fall under anti-discrimination law. The handbook addresses some of these gaps. For example:
Faith spaces, prayer facilities, features relating to women’s safety and their well-being, including pregnancy and menopause, baby feeding and changing, and non-gendered sanitary and changing facilities.
There is guidance on neurodiversity and reducing sensory overload, anxiety and stress, such as quiet rooms. Designers are asked to plan logical wayfinding with straight lines, and create curves rather than corners.
Technology is evolving on building accessibility, space and wayfinding, and auditors need to keep up with these developments. Lift destination control systems are a case in point where people no longer press a button for their floor. The central control system can be very confusing where there is a bank of lifts.
Case studies
The handbook recommends engaging with building users for insights into the level of accessibility and to keep them engaged throughout the project. There are six case studies: a theatre, a zoo, a parish church, a university science lab, and an outdoor space. The case study of an inaccessible heritage town hall shows how to create an accessible community building.
The handbook has 32 checklists for the external environment, internal building space, management and communication.
The Centre for Accessible Environments in London has been providing access advice for many years, many of them heritage buildings. As a not-for-profit, their aim is for more mainstream buildings to be accessible and inclusive. They got the chance with the office space for the Royal College of Occupational Therapists (RCOT). The Centre for Accessible Environments (CAE) website has an overview of the work they did on this building.
The image shows the accessible shower room prior to the refit. The design is based on a public standard and looks very clinical.
Image from the CAE website.
The building accommodates around 90 staff across four floors with meeting rooms on the ground floor. This floor had level access, powered doors, and an accessible shower room that looked like a hospital room. Not what CAE would consider gold standard.
The image shows the same wheelchair accessible shower room but with improved colour aesthetics. While this might meet British Standards, Australian access consultants might take issue with some aspects. The placement of the mirror, for example.
Image from the CAE website.
The outcome of CAE’s involvement is that the fit-out of the shower room looked less clinical despite the considerable amount of specialised equipment and features. The overall success was the focus on detail such as the amount of pile in a rug.
Quiet spaces and soundproofing and height adjustable desks are also part of the fitout. CAE’s access consultant also acknowledge that flexibility of space is essential. “Until people use a building following a redesign, you don’t know if it’s going to meet the needs of everyone.
The World Health Organization has updated their resources on age-friendly cities and communities and added a toolkit. In 2007 the Age Friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) program was rolled out. A Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities followed in 2010. The strength of the program was an early form of co-design with older people in local communities. That is, it promoted a bottom-up process with top-down policy support.
The guide has suggestions for meaningful engagement of older people in creating age-friendly environments. It includes detailed examples of existing national AFCC programmes, and practical steps for creating or strengthening such a programme. The vision is for all countries to establish a national AFCC programme by the end of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030).
The toolkit is a separate set of resources to the guide.
The glossary lists all the words and labels used for older people and is a useful resource in itself. As with many official guides there are a lot of words and explanations about the history and ideas. The eight domains of action are the same as the 2007 version of the guide. The Framework for implementing national programmes is in section 3.
There are more than 1400 members of the Global Network, and looks like it will continue to grow. The network acts locally to encourage full participation by older people in community life and active ageing. The program is an important step in meeting the goal of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing. Setting the scene for improved participation by older people benefits everyone. What’s good for older people is good for all people.
The Age Friendly Cities and Communities program puts older people at the centre and covers all aspects of life. It’s where policy meets people. The vision is that older people can transform themselves by transforming the environments in which they live, work and play.
The City of London Street Accessibility Tool is like an educational access audit report. It shows street designers how street features impact on the different needs of pedestrians. The focus is on people with mobility impairments and wheelchair users, which means everyone wins.
The tool recognises that there are sometimes competing needs: what’s good for one group might not be good for another. Co-design is the best way to find the trade-offs to prevent unintended exclusion. The tool comes in three parts: two Excel spreadsheets and a PDF downloadable from the City of London website.
Two photos from the “Instructions for Use” PDF document.
Doing the analysis
The PDF document begins with a table of different pedestrian types with and without assistive mobility devices. They cover mobility, sensory and neurodiverse conditions. There are three steps for using the tool.
The case study for the tool is London Wall, a street in London. A 500m long section is analysed for accessibility and is split into six sections. Each section has detailed access advice for improvements with photographs overlaid with dimensions and text to illustrate issues.
Down to the detail
The first spreadsheet has detailed dimensions, colours, and placements for elements such as tactiles, street furniture, and kerbs. All the necessary technical detail is here.
What pedestrians said
The second spreadsheet is a route analyser and has a column of photos with user feedback about the issues they see. The feedback sheet highlights the “why” of planning and design. It provides insights for planners and designers in a way that that is missed in 2D drawings.
The direct quotes from people with disability provide the necessary insights for planners and designers. However, those responsible doing the actual construction should also have this information. All the access planning and designing goes awry if the “why” isn’t understood by all involved.
Here are two quotes from the spreadsheet on route comments:
I feel quite wary. This is an unmarked crossing as far as I can see, I can’t see any wait signs. Somebody has stopped for me I can see a cyclist, I’m now onto some more tactile paving, this is the sort of crossing I am totally unfamiliar with. Person using a white cane
This is all fine but the paving stones are a little even so I’d be looking down and watching my speed so I don’t knock into one. Person using a wheelchair
A page from the London Street Accessibility Tool
Ross Atkin Associates and Urban Movement for the City of London Corporation developed The City of London Street Accessibility Tool (CoLSAT).
The London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) is similar to the Sydney Olympic Park Authority. Both focus on maintaining the benefits of hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Sydney claimed the title of “most accessible games ever” and then the title went to London. Inclusive design is a priority in all developments related to the Olympic precinct, and these Standards are designed to assist.
“Venues excelled in their inclusive design and the story could have ended there. However, LLDC embraced this approach and made ‘Championing equalities and inclusion’ one of their four corporate priority themes.” Baroness Grey-Thompson LLDC Board Member. Image from the front cover of the guide
London’s inclusive design standards
Inclusive design is the favoured term in the UK while other countries and the United Nations use universal design. They mean the same thing – creating inclusive societies.
A Standard not a Guide
The Inclusive Design Standardsbegin with all the relevant legislation and standards followed by a page on how to use the document. The standards have four key parts: inclusive neighbourhoods, movement, residential, and public buildings. Each part has two sections – the design intent and the inclusive guidelines. The guidance is just that and design teams can create solutions that achieve the same outcomes.
This is clearly a standards document and not a guide. It has numbered clauses for designers to reference. As such, it is not an accessible document itself. The language and size of text makes for detailed reading. A summary document with the key points would be useful as a starter.
Singapore embraced universal design principles in their building code in 2006. The government recognised the importance of designing buildings and homes for everyone. Similarly to other nations, Singapore’s population is ageing and some thoughtful planning was needed. Singapore’s universal design index is an assessment tool with star ratings for user-friendliness.
For building designers aiming to go beyond Australia’s minimum standards, this guide has specific design information to help. Plain language and lots of photos make this an easy to read document.
I took this photo of a sign at Gardens by the Bay in 2016. Itis an attempt to show that universal design is not just about disability. Editor.
The UDi provides indicators on the level of user-friendliness for each key user groups. The specific user groups are people with disability, older people, families with young children and expectant and nursing mothers.
User Group graphic from the Universal Design Index.
The guide is a building assessment tool with star ratings. The aggregate level of user friendliness across the user groups provides the Universal Design Index rating. This indicates the level of universal design implementation achieved.
User-friendliness rating scale as shown in the UDi guide.
And there is detail
This comprehensive guide has specific design details on circulation, wayfinding, sensory impairments, sanitary facilities and elder-friendly rooms, residential features, hotels, serviced apartments, and more. Some of the photos, such as sanitary facilities, and hotel rooms, look very disability-specific, but there are some good design ideas too.
In essence it is a relatively easy to read building guide presented as a self-assessment tool. It covers every design element you can think of in public buildings and residential settings. It’s also an exemplar of plain language that other guides could follow.
Universal design the Singapore way
The Singapore Government is committed to universal design throughout its building code. The Building and Construction Authority’s Universal Design Guide for Public Places was developed under Singapore’s Successful Ageing project. You can download each chapter separately from the website:
Introduction to user needs
Arriving at the building
Access around and within the building
Sanitary facilities
Wayfinding and information systems
Facilities and elements within the building
Family-friendly facilities
Chapters cover public transport buildings, eating outlets, supermarkets and retail outlets, parks and open spaces, and community clubs. Access consultants can compare this document with the Australian Access to Premises Standard.
Singapore is keen to progress universal design, and the Building and Construction Authority heads up their webpage with an encouraging title – “Friendly Built Environment”.
Most people living with dementia live at home in the community, not in a facility. Dementia develops over time and people experience it differently. With the right supports they can live independently for several years after diagnosis. Thoughtful urban planning and design is part of the web of community supports. Samantha Biglieri discuses dementia and planning in her short article.
A short irregular grid pattern of streets to create identifiable intersections.
Streets with ample space for pedestrian with wide buffer zones between pedestrians, cyclists and motorists.
Variated architectural styles within the same development. Vary the landscape to provide unique landmarks. This includes mixed land-use, different styles of street furniture, public art and vegetation.
Development of memorable landscape features, open public squares and community facilities that promote social interaction and a sense of belonging.
Summary
Contrary to popular belief, over two thirds of Canadians with dementia live in the community as opposed to congregate living. This begs a question that has not been adequately explored in planning practice or academia: How can we as planners who deal with land-use, community design, and public consultation every day, understand and meet the needs of people with dementia (PWD), who are citizens just like everyone else? After examining existing work on the relationship between the built environment and PWD, I argue a dementia-specific approach to planning practice and research is needed in the Canadian context.
Diversity, equity and inclusion is easy to talk about, but how do you make it happen? Society and businesses make commitments to the concepts, but it needs more than policies. The WELL Building Standard is about diversity, equity and inclusion by design within the built environment.
The WELL Building Standard is a building certification that focuses on human health and wellness. The assessment method encourages active lifestyles, and building features such as natural light and good air quality. The Standard includes a set of strategies focused on improving quality of life through the design. The Standard now includes the The WELL Rating™.
Jack Noonan writes in Sourceable that when we design for inclusivity, everybody benefits. Two hundred advisors from 26 countries devised the The WELL Equity Rating™. This rating framework is designed to help organisations meet their diversity, equity and inclusion goals.
The WELL Equity Rating™ was developed through a design thinking approach. This included problem solving in collaboration with people from marginalised groups.
The WELL Rating™ gives organisations a framework to improve access to health and wellbeing and address diversity, equity and inclusion. It contains more than 40 features spaning six action areas:
WELL also addresses topics such as housing equity, modern slavery and issues of domestic violence. A new feature for the next edition will include colonisation and acknowledgement of traditional custodians of the land on which we live work and play.
Most people living with dementia live at home in the community, not in a facility. Dementia develops over time and people experience it differently. With the right supports they can live independently for several years after diagnosis. Thoughtful urban planning and design is part of the web of community supports. Samantha Biglieri discuses dementia and planning in her short article.
