RIAI CPD Seminar, “Introduction to the revised Part M”
The Grand Hotel, Malahide, 27 June 2000
ASPIRATIONS OF THE DISABLED COMMUNITY
Remarks by Paul
P Hogan, FCSD, FRSA, FSDI, Hon.ANCAD
Some years ago, I was invited
to take part in a conference which was being held in London on the subject
of design and disability. It was a wet and windy morning when I arrived at
the conference venue and, after paying off my taxi, I found myself confronted
by a number of stone steps leading to the entrance. There were no hand
rails. It was quickly apparent to me that, what with the gale force wind and
my disability, there was no way that I could mount the steps in safety. The
choice was between waiting in the rain for someone to come along who was prepared
to help me, or an undignified crawl with attendant damage to clothes and self-esteem.
You will appreciate the irony of the situation. Inside the building, a warm
and dry collection of experts are discussing issues of design and disability
while outside, in the cold and wet, a genuinely disabled person is unable
to gain access.
Every person with a disability
has a repertoire of such stories, some humorous, some humiliating, some infuriating.
They are all concerned with stupid and unnecessary barriers to the full participation
of people in society and they nearly always involve a failure in design. So,
at the outset, may I say that I welcome anything which will improve
access to buildings, public and private, for all people and, in so far as
the revised Part M Building Regulations represent a step in this direction,
I unreservedly commend them. The devil is in the detail, of course, and, like
all of you, I look forward to studying the import and impact of the revised
regulations.
I am a little uncomfortable
with title assigned to my contribution this morning, as it seems to imply
a role as spokesman of the “disabled community” when I have no such mandate.
I speak only for myself, and I am sure other people with disabilities would
have quite different views from mine. And this leads me to an important point:
the diversity of people with disabilities. Until quite recently, the term
“the disabled” used to be widely used. It was and is a categorization which
is so broad as to be meaningless and which inter alia depersonalizes
those referred to. What we have are
people with disabilities, a very imprecisely defined group, with as varied
talents and aspirations as may be found in any cross section of the community.
These are people with physical, sensory and learning disabilities resulting
from a variety of causes; congenital, illness, accident. They are young and
old, although, of course, certain conditions are associated with the process
of ageing.
However, one generality can
be made, and it applies not just in Ireland but throughout Europe: people
with disabilities are in general poor. Every survey confirms this bleak conclusion.
People with disabilities have lower incomes, have less access to employment
and education and are marginalized in a variety of ways. In this country,
80 per cent of disabled people are unemployed and are likely to live in poverty,
be educated or trained in segregated services away from their communities,
have no access to regular and reliable transport, and live on or be on a waiting
list for segregated housing or residential settings. The numbers of such people
are also increasing through better healthcare and increased life-expectancy.
I am unable to say what the
aspirations of people with disabilities are. They are probably as varied as
the aspirations of this group and, as with any group, are tied up with issues
of family, income, career and self-image. However, I think I can say with
some confidence what people with disabilities do NOT want. They do not want
charity and they do not want to be patronized. They don’t want special treatment
and they don’t want to have to enter buildings through side doors. The don’t
want to have to ask for help going up or down stairs and they don’t want to
be humiliated by being unable to enter a toilet or being unable to close the
door when they do. They don’t want to have to decline invitations from friends
because of anticipated embarrassment (and this is central to the revision
of Part M). They don’t want to be excluded from participation in the normal
things which society takes for granted: taking a bus, going to the pub or
the pictures, having a job and paying taxes, living independently and contributing
to the economy. It’s not a lot to ask is it?
And its denial, I suggest, is a scandal and a violation of human rights.
Some of these issues have nothing
to do with Part M but I think it is important to put the revisions in context.
Morever, the sidelining of people with disabilities is most dramatically seen
in the design of the built environment where barriers to free movement abound.
Equally apparent are the barriers to information which exclude people with
sensory deprivation or learning difficulties. The exclusion is sometimes near
total and, as a result, people with disabilities are invisible. If you need
evidence of this, just look around you. It is generally accepted that 10 per
cent of the population has a significant physical disability. It follows,
does it not, that one in ten of the people you pass in the street, share a
restaurant with or sit beside in the cinema should be noticeably impaired.
Of course, the reality is quite different. Years ago, when I traveled more
extensively than I do now, I developed an informal measure which I called
my visibility index. It worked like this. Wherever I was, I took station in
the centre of town and counted the numbers of people with obvious impairments
who passed. You will not be surprised that the one in ten figure was never
reached, but what was striking was that in many great cities I never
saw a person with a disability during my watch. The truth is that the
environment in most cities is so hostile, uncomfortable and even dangerous,
that only the bravest and most determined venture abroad.
One hundred years ago, ninety
per cent of the world’s population lived on the land or in rural areas. Today,
more than half live in cities which are, according to Richard Rogers, the most important destroyers
of the eco system. They are also in many cases centres of pollution, poverty,
crime and inhuman living conditions. For this reason, the Barcelona Declaration,
promulgated in the city of that name in 1995, which commits municipal governments
to a range of measures to meet the needs of people with disabilities is of
great importance. Nearly 400 European cities including, I am glad to say,
Dublin Limerick and Sligo, have so far acceded to the Declaration which is
one of a number of initiatives which have radically altered the disability/rehabilitation
landscape in recent years. Others are the United Nations Standard Rules for
the Equalisation of Opportunity, the Americans with Disability Act, Article
13 of the Amsterdam Treaty and significant pieces of legislation passed in
most countries of the European Union.
To this list I would add the
establishment of the European Institute for Design and Disability in 1993
which gave formal recognition to the links between design and disability and
to the concern of the design profession.
While regulations concerning
accessibility for people with disabilities were brought into Swedish planning
and building legislation as early as 1966, interest in Ireland only took off
with the United Nations Year of the Disabled, when badly designed ramps proliferated
everywhere and were probably the cause of many accidents. Among the more famous
of these were the 1:1 ramps on Sandymount strand. When outraged wheelchair
users complained, the alleged response was that these were intended for women
with baby buggies. These ramps, and others like them, reflected a model which
perceived disability in terms of wheelchairs. This was understandable in that
the international symbol of disability was, and continues to be, a representation
of a person in a wheelchair. However, as is well known, wheelchair users constitute
only a small minority of the disabled population. The biggest group is those
with mobility problems caused by disease, accident, old age or sensory impairment.
People who just find it difficult to get around. And for these, architects
continued to design buildings which denied them access or which imposed severe
physical hardship when they did succeed in gaining entry.
I have often wondered why this
should be so and have come to the conclusion that it is due to a failure of
imagination. I am sure there is no ill-will, but is it possible that many
buildings are detailed by middle-class young men and women in the prime of
vigorous life who have no conception of what it is to be old or disabled,
and that nothing in their formation has equipped them to design for such people?
How else to explain the vast, exhausting public buildings, the endless corridors
of airports, the inaccessible toilets and the stairs with one handrail. If
you are one-armed or, as is common, have a weak grip in one hand, then life
is indeed a lottery.
On the other hand, it really
doesn’t take much imagination to realise that deficiencies in the design of
products or of the man-made environment press heaviest on people with disabilities.
These are people who have lost, or never had, the capacity to adapt to the
deficiencies and failures in the environment which most people take for granted.
For them design must work first time. Whether the problem is one of poorly
located street furniture which impedes the blind person, or a door knob which
literally cannot be operated by a person with arthritis, the reason is nearly
always a failure in design.
It doesn’t have to be like
this. Placing street furniture in a rational position takes no longer than
putting it where it will obstruct the unwary or visually impaired. Forming
the door opener to suit the arthritis suffer’s grip uses no more material.
It is a question of thought, which was, you may recall, Gio Ponti’s definition
of design.
Simple observation tells us that good building design can facilitate,
inspire and raise the quality of life. On the other hand, bad, uncaring or
dangerous design can frustrate, depress and make the life of the disabled
person into one long obstacle course. In a slogan coined by the European Institute
for design and Disability, Good Design Enables, Bad Design Disables.
The role of the architect in helping to bring about a truly integrated
society is of crucial importance. The dwelling or personal space is the first
link in the chain leading to the participation of people with disabilities.
In many ways it is the most important, because the confidence gained in the
domestic setting will enable the person with a disability to confront other
barriers. Rehabilitation specialists often bemoan the eroding of hard-won
gains when their discharged patients are placed in an unfavourable environment
or lack the essential means to conduct a normal productive life.
These are people whose lives may be transformed by better design, which
will benefit the whole community, as distinct from those who need the products
of assistive technology to enable them to live independently.
The first group is covered by the concept of universal design that
has gained strength over the past decade and has been the subject of a number
of recent international conferences. Universal design is a reaction to exclusive
and excluding design. Until very recently, most products and environments
were designed for a non-existent “average man” who was young, enjoyed perfect
health and had the physical attributes of an Olympic athlete. Design training
reflected this Platonic ideal and an historical reality in which old age was
exceptional and people with disabilities impoverished and short-lived.
Under principles of universal design, design is directed at the greatest
possible number ― a market segment that includes sighted and blind people,
right and left-handed, mobile and wheelchair user, the temporarily disabled
and the permanently incapacitated, and so on.
Jim Sandhu of the University of Northumbria, a leading authority on universal
design, says that it “recognizes that accessible systems, reliable information
sources and enabling environments can maximize choice and enhance the ability
of the individual to live independently and execise citizenship proactively”.
Stressing the changing nature of design, Sandhu says that universal design
“necessarily implies a multi-disciplinary team approach with input from a
broader range of specialities and expertise, such as: transport, demography,
sociology, human factors, etc.”, with such synergy being crucial to the further
evolution of universal design.
Putting these ideas into practice is not, of course, easy. Terms like
universal design, design for all, barrier-free design, etc., come trippingly
off the tongue but giving them reality represents a severe challenge for designers.
In many ways, it is easier for industrial designers. Industrial design is
a young profession and is essentially technology driven. By contrast, architecture,
it seems to me, carries with it a lot of baggage in terms of tradition and
established vocabularies. That is why it is important to have agreed minimum
standards, as in Part M, and guidance, in the form of continuing advice
and research reflecting developments in technology and ideas like those of
the adaptable house and the smart house.
The first of these, the adaptable house, is based on such a simple and
sensible idea that one feels it should be adopted almost without discussion.
As defined by the National Housing Council of the Netherlands (NWR), which
has been a pioneer in this field, it is “the realization of newly built or
renovated housing space which is not
specifically adapted to disabled occupants, but is designed in such a way
that it can easily and relatively inexpensively be adapted at a later stage
to the needs of an occupant who becomes handicapped”.
Adaptable housing recognizes that during its lifecycle every home will
have to accommodate people with special needs (elderly people, pregnant women,
young children, people who want to work at home, people who are ill for a
considerable time as well as people with disabilities) and makes provision
for organic development and change. The initial cost is estimated at a paltry
one per cent of the total building cost.
The smart house is something different and is of great importance to people
with severe physical disabilities. Using a computer, controlled by a mouthstick
or headstick, with breath or sip-n-puff switches, people with minimal or no
motor functions can manipulate robotic assistive appliances and direct them
to carry out a variety of tasks. Environmental control systems can be regulated,
wheelchairs driven, and people who would otherwise be excluded can enter the
world of work. For the blind, there are machines that read text, speaking
clocks and elevators, and computerized navigational systems. For those who
cannot speak, there are artificial speech synthesisers.
The intelligent home is a concept to be developed around the user whether
able-bodied or disabled. Compensation for sensory functions is possible when
the home is provided with inputs from its own sensors for fire and smoke alarms,
temperature, light and movement. The information can be reacted to automatically
(a call to the fire brigade for example) or as decided by the user. For people
who are hard of hearing, visual indicators of alarms and doorbells can be
provided. For the person with reduced mobility, the system provides interfaces
with lighting, radio, TV, kitchen appliances, central heating, door openers,
computer, telephone, intercom, etc.
The application of this wondrous
technology has been of immense value to the community at large as well as
to people with disabilities. We can today hear voices which would otherwise
be silent. One thinks of Davoren Hanna, Christopher Nolan and Stephen Hawking.
But there is a potential dark side which Bastien Treffers, a Dutch disability
activist, has warned about, asking rhetorically, “will the person with a serious
physical disability become a new “caveman”, transported by a steel hoist,
a so called steel nurse, and clothed and fed by a robot who will also be charged
with changing his library books through a terminal?”
This is not altogether fanciful. Much of the development in this field
is driven by academics and public service providers who, whether they admit
it or not, see “the disabled” as a problem to be coped with, and technology
as something that makes the work of carers easier and optimises the time of
highly paid professionals. Just where this can lead is illustrated by a report
on an interactive audio-visual telecommunications project where elderly people
and those caring for them were linked by video telephony. Describing the project,
the report states that it enabled the carer “to monitor the proper performance
of physical exercises the client is to carry out”. When I read that I thought
at once of George Orwell’s 1984 where precisely that chilling scene
is enacted as Winston Smith goes through his routines under the stern eye
of Big Brother’s representative.
Designers, and architects in particular, are the first line of defence
against such excesses. They must mediate and adapt fast developing technologies
and ensure that they are humanised and reflect the needs of those with whom
they interact. After all, no one wants to live in something which is a cross
between an electronics laboratory and a hardware shop.
Working with people with disabilities and rehabilitation professionals,
architects should develop buildings and environments
which are accessible, secure, economical, respectful of the environment, and
which enrich the lives of those who use or live in them.
Whatever the merits of the revisions presented here today, the ultimate
goal of Part M should be the abolition of Part M. There should be no need
for such regulations, as the scandal of the exclusion of people with disabilities
takes its place beside bear baiting, slavery and capital punishment. Just
as no one now campaigns for votes for women, so in the future no one should
talk about accessible buildings. After all, what other kind of buildings could
there be?
Paul Hogan co-founded the European
Institute for Design and Disability in 1992 and served as its president for
the first three years. Educated as a designer in Dublin and Copenhagen, he
has worked in over forty countries as a consultant for the European Union,
the United Nations and the World Bank.