Are you an inclusive designer?

Julie Fleck

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000705256
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Despite improvements in the last 20 years we still have a long way to go before all of our buildings, places and spaces are easy and comfortable for all of us to use. This book puts forward a powerful case for a totally new attitude towards inclusivity and accessibility. Exploring both the social and the business cases for striving for better, this book will empower architects to have more enlightened discussions with their clients about why we should be striving for better than the bare minimum, and challenging the notion that inclusive design should be thought of reductively as simply a list of "special features" to be added to a final design, or that inclusivity is only about wheelchair access. This book will be to help make inclusive design business as usual rather than something that is added on to address legislation at the end of the development process. Accessible and engaging, this book will be an invaluable resource for students as well as practicing architects, richly illustrated with case studies showing both good and bad examples of inclusive design and celebrating inclusion.

chapter 1
How much have we achieved in 50 years?

The challenges disabled people face in accessing homes, buildings and public spaces constitutes an unacceptable diminution of quality of life and equality.’

House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee, Building for Equality: Disability and the Built Environment, 2017¹

In politics, in education and in our personal and professional lives, we like to feel we are more enlightened and inclusive than previous generations. But evidence presented to the House of Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee Inquiry into Disability and the Built Environment in 2016 heard that many disabled people still face difficulties accessing homes, buildings and public spaces.

Why is this when our knowledge and understanding about how to make buildings and places accessible is so much greater than it was when the first British Standard was published more than 50 years ago and the first building regulation requiring provision for disabled people in new buildings was introduced 30 years ago? Technical standards and building regulations have continued to improve and expand in their scope, and anti-discrimination legislation – the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995 and the Equality Act in 2010 – has ensured that access for disabled people has been firmly on the political agenda for more than 20 years.

Despite all this legislation, regulations, technical standards and years of experience, it is clear that we are still designing, building and maintaining architectural barriers that exclude a substantial proportion of our community. This chapter looks at what we have learnt about inclusive design since the first British Standard to address access for disabled people was published in 1967 – CP96 Access for the Disabled to Buildings² – and how technical standards, legislation and regulations have developed in the UK.

Half a century of technical standards

British Standard CP96 was influenced by the first technical standard produced in America in 1961³ and the work undertaken by Selwyn Goldsmith in the first edition of his book ‘Designing for the Disabled’⁴ in 1963. It reflected the recognition that wheelchair users were excluded from society not as a result of their physical impairment or health condition but as a result of the lack of ramps, lifts, toilets and other facilities that enabled them to access and use a building. Selwyn Goldsmith, in his 1997 book The New Paradigm, eloquently describes this early history, providing a clear outline of how the first building standards were developed.⁵

It is interesting to look back at the very first access standard drafted in America in 1956 and the differences in approach taken at that time by the USA and the UK. Tim Nugent, manager of the rehabilitation education centre at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, wanted his disabled students to have the same education and be able to compete equally with non-disabled students. He did not want them to have to rely on welfare. The buildings within the university campus and the community facilities in the two local towns had, therefore, to be modified so that disabled students could use them independently. He developed an architectural brief to help remodel more than 200 university buildings and make them wheelchair accessible.

Nugent saw society as the origin of the problem for his disabled students. He explained:

Physical and architectural barriers stand in the way of total rehabilitation. They stand between the disabled and their goals. They stand between the disabled and society. Many [disabled people] are afraid to venture forth because of the architectural barriers they encounter. We are basically concerned with making it possible for the great talents and resources of millions of physically disabled individuals to be put to use for the betterment of mankind by the elimination of architectural barriers.⁶

His pioneering work influenced the approach taken by the American Standards Association (which later became ANSI, the American National Standards Institute). Nugent conducted structured research with more than 400 disabled people and this data was used to inform the very first American national accessibility standard A117.1, published in 1961. These access standards – including the 1:12 ramp gradient – became very familiar and had a major influence on the development of access standards worldwide.

Design for special needs

In the UK the approach was not a macro/societal approach where barriers were to be removed so disabled people could participate on an equal basis, but one which Selwyn Goldsmith describes as the micro/welfare approach – whereby separate facilities are provided for disabled people rather than being integrated into mainstream facilities. This ‘design for special needs’ approach is well illustrated by the way accessible public toilet facilities are provided in the UK. Based on research Selwyn had undertaken with disabled people in Norwich, the first British Standard included a ‘unisex’ wheelchair-accessible WC designated specifically for use by disabled people. This gender-neutral WC enabled a wheelchair user to be accompanied by an assistant of the opposite sex without the embarrassment of entering the male or female toilets. This differed from the American approach, which advocated a wheelchair-accessible cubicle within the male and female WC provision.

It is interesting that there was even a debate about whether the solution should be the provision of special and separate facilities or designing mainstream facilities in a way that would also suit disabled people. The most inclusive solution is, of course, both. A wheelchair-accessible WC cubicle in the male and female provision integrates rather than segregates the independent user, while the separate unisex WC facility caters for those who need assistance from people of the opposite sex, as well as providing choice and flexibility for a wide variety of other users (many blind people use the unisex wheelchair-accessible WC as it has plenty of room for a guide dog). The UK regulations today do require a cubicle described as suitable for people with ‘ambulant disabilities’ integrated within the male and female provision, but it is too small for use by a wheelchair user, requiring all wheelchair users to queue for the only wheelchair-accessible facility available to them – the separate designated unisex WC. A larger wheelchair-accessible integrated cubicle would also provide more room for parents with small children.

The need for a variety of provision is clearly demonstrated today by the campaign to install Changing Places WCs in large public buildings, in addition to the standard unisex wheelchair-accessible WC required by regulation. Designed for use by people with complex and multiple impairments who need assistance, the room includes a peninsula toilet and basin, an adult-sized changing bench, a hoist and an optional shower (Figure 1.1). Without these specially designed and equipped facilities, over a quarter of a million people who need Changing Places toilets could not get out and about and enjoy the day-to-day activities many of us take for granted.⁷ This is now recognised by the government, which is consulting on a change to Part M of the building regulations to make Changing Places toilets mandatory in new large public buildings such as shopping centres and cinemas, and has announced an investment of £2 million to enable the National Health Service (NHS) to install more than 100 Changing Places toilets in NHS hospitals.⁸ This follows a £2 million investment by the Department for Transport to increase the number of Changing Places toilets in motorway service stations.

Figure 1.1 Changing Places toilet, City Hall, London, 2008: an existing (inaccessible) toilet and shower room on the ground floor of City Hall was converted by Ann Sawyer, of Access=Design, into a ‘Changing Places’ toilet.

The standard (inaccessible) WC provision today is increasingly unisex, recognising diversity and difference in users – non-gender labelling makes it easier for transgender people to use. By incorporating the wash-hand basin within the cubicle, these slightly larger cubicles are easier for everyone to use, particularly women, who have had to put up with tiny toilet cubicles for years.

Choice, flexibility and a variety of both integrated provision (inclusive design) and separate provision (accessible design that meets a particular need) should be the aim, especially in larger buildings and public places.

The first legislation to address access to buildings

Today, the first American standard and the first British standard seem very limited in their scope, in their application and in the dimensions used, but they were, in both countries, the catalyst to effecting significant legislative change.

In 1969 Jack Ashley MP established the All-Party Disablement Group and, having won the ballot that year to introduce a private members’ bill, he successfully steered the 1970 Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act (CSDP Act) onto the statute book.

Section 4 of the CSDP Act placed a duty on anyone providing a public building to make provision for disabled people in terms of access into and within the building, and for parking and sanitary facilities. The application of these requirements was, however, very limited – provision was required only ‘in so far as it is in the circumstances both practicable and reasonable’ and only in public buildings. Many local authorities did, however, start to make improvements to their public buildings, but as the government did not introduce the necessary regulations to enforce Section 4, there was no way of enforcing provision, so many other public buildings remained inaccessible. Employment buildings were not included – presumably on the assumption that disabled people did not work.

As well as introducing a range of special services for disabled people, the Act required local housing authorities to have regard to the ‘special needs’ of disabled people in relation to the provision of new housing. This led to the development in the 1970s of technical advice on the design of accessible housing. The government published advice on the design of mobility homes in 1974⁹ (the forerunner of Lifetime Homes) and wheelchair accessible homes in 1975,¹⁰ so it is staggering that more than 40 years later we are still not, as a matter of course, building mainstream housing that fully integrates these basic accessibility standards.

It is, however, fascinating to look back to 1993 and the direction the government was moving in with regard to the need to build more homes accessible to disabled people. Government planning policy in 1993 included, in Planning Policy Guidance 3: Housing (PPG 3), that a local authority development policy on accessible housing may be appropriate where there is clear evidence of local need. The limitations of the UK building regulations were being recognised and consideration was being given to making access to housing a requirement of the building regulations. Despite the optimism in 1993, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Access Committee for England, along with numerous organisations of disabled people who cam...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction A celebration of inclusion or a warning against complacency?
• Chapter 1 How much have we achieved in 50 years?
• Chapter 2 Designing an accessible City
• Chapter 3 The most accessible Olympic and Paralympic Games
• Chapter 4 The good, the bad and the inaccessible
• Chapter 5 Towards better legislation, policy and regulations
• Chapter 6 Towards an inclusive future
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Further information
• Notes and References
• Index
• Image credits