While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
Everyone has his or her idea of how we can begin to unify, heal, come together.
Mine is to
celebrate the ADA in the spirit of equity for all.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
The current slowdown/shut down of virtually all offices and organizations creates a fabulous opportunity.
As work, sadly, dries up for an unknown period, those who impact the built environment and the professional organizations that represent them can work online to promote access for all.
Chef Jose Andres is a shining example what a professional can do pro-bono in times of crises.
Who would like to step
up and be the Jose Andres of architecture, engineering, landscape architecture,
planning, and interior design?
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
Millions of Baby Boomers are retiring soon and expecting to live into their 80s.
Most will not be able to drive a car till the day they die.
For that reason alone, we need to ramp up
our effort to ensure accessibility – from the grandest concert hall to the most
modest city park to the life-affirming rural nature trail to the essential
corner grocery.
Anyone, in an instant, can join the
disability community. That is why Universal Design and Inclusive Placemaking
have an immeasurable intrinsic wealth.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done\
Millions of Baby Boomers are retiring soon and expecting to live into their 80s.
Most will not be able to drive a car till the day they die.
For that reason alone, we need to ramp up our effort to ensure accessibility – from the grandest concert hall to the most modest city park to the life-affirming rural nature trail to the essential corner grocery.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
create prototypes of flexible spaces that accommodate people with a wide range of physical abilities.
Publish articles and white papers that prove that accessible design can be beautiful and timeless.
Create living spaces that
allow people to age in place.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
It says here that nothing is more sustainable and
durable than a community that addresses the needs of all.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
Look at resilient design, an answer to climate change that also improves accessibility.
People with disabilities where I live, in Miami, are afraid that raised roads, buildings on stilts and other answers to sea level rise will create more barriers than they face now.
Do something to resolve that.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
Hint: the fewer gadgets, the better.
Complex solutions with dozens of moving parts = just one thing breaks
and the outdoor lift stops serving people with disabilities for ages.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
So, I am talking to you, both national
office and hundreds of local chapters of the AIA – get in gear to stage some
kind of online and in print exhibit or observance that teaches your members
about the ADA. The landmark 30th anniversary was July 26, 2020.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
This is not about special privileges.
This is about removing barriers – tens of thousands of them, that continually make people with disabilities the most under- and unemployed of any minority group.
Those unacceptable employment figures rarely are because of a person’s disability.
They exist because even in the 21st century, the built
environment makes it difficult people with disabilities to access education,
transportation, healthcare, recreation, nature, culture, shopping and housing
essential to finding work equal to their capabilities.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
That is why I am calling on all professional organizations that impact the built environment to celebrate the ADA.
Millions of their cumulative members can be inspired to build beautiful, graceful, human-scaled design that will make life more equitable for people who have mobility, sight, hearing and intellectual disabilities
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
As an advocate for inclusive design, I see the self-fulfilling negative prophecy – from inception to epic failure.
If
the professional’s attitude is anti-ADA…their designs come out complicated,
costly, confounding and non-compliant.
These same masters of their fields have awards on their walls for innovative projects.
Projects that dealt with myriad fire, HVAC, flood, wind, life safety, commercial/residential building and zoning codes – but were still able to be creative, signature works.
But
toss the ADA at them and they feign that it is impossible to integrate
human-friendly design into their master work.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
The New York City American Institute of Architects chapter dedicated virtually all of its recent Oculus quarterly publication to exploring issues of accessible design.
Renown writers, expert in design and disability, shared vivid words and images on progress, challenges, pitfalls and trends.
A topic very important to Familia Wright was explored: how to create
design that is so universal, so creative, so seamless – that it doesn’t look
like institutional “ADA" architecture.
In a nearly four-decade career as a
journalist, public policy researcher and marketer – I have worked with hundreds
of architects, planners and designers. Some rather famous.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
My wife and I are only in our mid 50s, but we remember many buildings at the state university we attended being totally inaccessible to wheelchair users.
This was in the mid-1980s. And some
of the worst offenders were not old red brick halls from the early 20th
century – they were modernist monstrosities of inaccessibility built not long
before we went to college.
The ADA made things better, but it did not wave the magic wand.
Despite billions in explosive real estate development that could have supported desperately-needed redesign and retrofitting, only a fraction of New York’s subway is accessible.
Even those frequently have broken down elevators – and what use is a system
that has an accessible station near your apartment, but none close to where you
work?
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
Buildings, streets, crosswalks,
trains, buses, parks, natural trails, city halls, schools, malls, libraries and
much more have been made more accessible because of the 1990 adoption of the
ADA.
We still have a long way to go toward
removing old barriers and approaching accessible design in a creative way, but
we certainly are ahead of the game compared the way life was before the ADA.
While many cities have shown efforts to implement accessible design since the 1990 adoption of the American Disabilities Act, more must be done
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) turned 30 this summer.
Everyone whose work impacts the built
environment – architects, engineers, urban designers, town planners, landscape
architects, interior designers and the public officials who oversee their work
in the public realm – should be scrambling to do something to observe this
landmark federal civil rights legislation.
While the ADA is not a building code
or some kind of zoning that can be ignored via variance (though I could fill a
large room with designers who seemed willfully ignorant in perpetuating that
false assumption) – its biggest impact by far has been on the civic realm.
