Turning disability experience into expertise in assessing building accessibility: A contribution to articulating disability epistemology

“I Can Understand Where They’re Coming From”: How Clinicians’ Disability Experiences Shape Their Interaction With Clients

“…Disability studies scholars counter this approach by exploring “the social implications for bodies deemed excessively aberrant” (Snyder & Mitchell, 2001). In other words, disability studies have problematized the positivist approach by foregrounding disability epistemology, whereas knowledge/expertise is produced through an embodied, biographical experience often informed by the fact that disabled people are confronted with obstacles or problematic situations that can prompt enquiry and invoke a particular and reflexive insight (Nijs & Heylighen, 2015).…”

On CRDPs and CRPD: why the rights of people with disabilities are crucial for understanding climate-resilient development pathways

“…43 Nijs and Heylighen show how disability experience can transform to expertise and advocates recognising the situated knowledges that emerge from disability experience as legitimate knowledge. 65 The authors explain how a traditional epistemological assumption about how knowledge must be produced objectively delegitimises the often embodied knowledge of disability experience. 65 A recognition of people with disabilities as experts on their situation and the marginalisation processes that they face-mobilising modes of engagement with people with disabilities within research projects and climate interventions-could bring more diverse knowledges and measures into climate resilient development.…”

“…65 The authors explain how a traditional epistemological assumption about how knowledge must be produced objectively delegitimises the often embodied knowledge of disability experience. 65 A recognition of people with disabilities as experts on their situation and the marginalisation processes that they face-mobilising modes of engagement with people with disabilities within research projects and climate interventions-could bring more diverse knowledges and measures into climate resilient development. This addition could in turn help to address the mechanisms through which climate change adaptation interventions often exclude marginalised groups and their knowledges from design and implementation, take insufficient account of the processes that produce vulnerability, and consequently fail to reach the most marginalised groups.…”

Taken for Granted: Material Relations Between Disability and Codes/Guidelines

“…The museum cases were chosen based on: their level of prestige (e.g., all national museums); whether the design of the building or exhibits explicitly considered accessibility; their geographic location in Canada; and whether the content of the museum is condusive to displaying information about disability. For instance, the three museums reported here were built relatively recently (CWM 2005, CSHF 2011 and CMHR 2014) and used more contemporary information about diversity and disability; the content explored in the exhibits at each museum had the potential to look at disability through different enactments [11][12][13][14][15][16] of war (CWM), sports (CSHF) and human rights (CMHR). Each museum study in our portfolio was studied as a distinct case where the exterior grounds and spatial environments of the building were analyzed by various researchers; analyzed by persons with disabilities along with the researchers through dialoguing while in motion (based on Anderson's premise of "talking whilst walking" [17]); interviewing architects, designers, curators, and historians; soundscapes and audio walks; sketches and drawings; and analyzing significant documents in relation to the case and in the museum archives that relate to disability.…”