Creating an Accessible Built Environment

Universal design (UD), sometimes called barrier-free design, is the notion that the built environment should be accessible to ever yone – young and old, shoe user and wheelchair user, lef t-and right-handed, immigrant and native-born, sick and healthy, well-rested and bone-tired.

UD should not be confused with the often costly retrofitting that we apply to our dwellings and public buildings when legislative requirements, good conscience or fear of litigation prompts us to do so. Instead, UD is seamless, unobtrusive and  front-end  loaded. The beauty  of  UD  lies in  its  invisibility. It  sidesteps  the  stigma  that unfortunately still attaches to so many adaptive devices.

UD is literally just outside your door – in the form of curb cuts, those smooth dips in the side- walk that occur at intersections and other loca- tions. Curb cuts make public spaces accessible to  those who  use  mobility  devices, of  course. But they also  aid  the parent with a stroller, the delivery person with a hand-truck, the kid with a skateboard, and the weary teacher with a sore knee and a load of groceries on her way home at day’s end.

The  wide  hallways  of  many  older  schools– many of them built before the term “universal design” was  coined  –  not  only  accommodate small  feet  and  large wheels  together, but  also facilitate quick building evacuation. Ironically, it was the very width of those halls that the Har- ris-era funding formula penalized as “non-class- room” space.

The  automatic  door  openers  and  Braille- equipped elevators we encounter so frequently are now things we take for  granted. So too are levers in place of twist-taps in washrooms – a design feature which aids the very young and the arthritic, but is also more hygienic.

But we can expand our thinking about design far beyond this. Clear, consistent signage makes public  spaces  more  useable   for   people  with dyslexia. It  can  also  help  those  whose  brains – through fatigue or stress – are not processing complex  information.  Universal  captioning  in movie  theatres –  whether  traditional  titles  or rear-window captioning – would assist the deaf, but  also  those  learning  a  new  language. And there is no good reason why desks and counter- tops should not be manufactured with a built-in capacity for multiple height adjustments.  Even for those who are standing up there are ergo- nomic advantages in lowering surfaces for such things as meal preparation.

The concept  of  UD  has been  around  for  a while. But it was codified nearly 10 years ago into seven now widely accepted principles developed by  a  team  of  designers, researchers and  engi- neers: equitable use; flexibility in use; simple and intuitive use; perceptible information; tolerance for error; low physical effort; size and space for approach and use.

UD is a design philosophy that assumes that there is no such thing as able-bodied or disabled, capable or incapable. There are  merely six billion different capabilities, and we are ingenious enough as a species to create an environment that accommodates them all.