Universal Design and the Problem of “Post-Disability” Ideology

Abstract

Although Universal Design gains popularity as a common sense strategy for crafting built environments for all users, accessibility for disabled people remains a marginal area of inquiry within design practice and theory. This article argues that the tension between accessibility and Universal Design stems from inadequate critical and historical attention to the concept of disability as it relates to discourses of "good design." This article draws upon critical disability theory to reveal the persistence of "post-disability" narratives and "ideologies of ability" from the eugenics era into the present theory and practice of Universal Design.

Sonic Accessibility: Increasing Social Equity Through the Inclusive Design of Sound in Museums and Heritage Sites

“…However, it is noted that such research foregrounds individual experiences, namely sight or hearing loss. Recent scholarship has called for a more critical perspective to Inclusive/Universal Design (Hamraie , ), concerned not only with environmental inequality (exclusion occurring through physical and visual concerns) but also the disqualification of difference through ideology, political economy and cultural systems. Such perspectives of Critical Access Studies question “who counts as “everyone” and how designers can know” (Hamraie , 261).…”

“…Inclusive Designers have commented that the traditional ISA and broader foregrounding of wheel‐chair users in relation to designing for difference in the built environment reduces disability to “a singular form of mobility impairment” (Imrie and Hall , 10). Hamraie () attributes the foregrounding of physical and visual access and prioritisation of specific disabled people such as wheel‐chair users to the codes, standards and checklists, which served as the dominant currency of accessibility provision in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite the founding of socially inclusive design approaches such as Universal and Inclusive Design that were initiated in order to disrupt the standardised approaches of mainstem design (Lusher and Mace ; Mace ), and the passing of laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and Equality Act, an ocularcentric checklist approach to accessibility provision is still the reality for much of the design and management of the built environment today.…”

“…). Such agendas advocate an increase in accessibility provision and a reframing of designer's ideology in relation to learning disabled people, transcending the established perspective of physical and visual accessibility and the ‘checklist approach’ to Inclusive Design that prioritises the needs of physically or visually disabled patrons (Hamraie ).…”

The social construction of disability and the capabilities approach: Implications for nursing

“…This is partially attributable to the fact that despite expansive civil rights protections, neither the ADA nor the ADAAA represented “… a fundamental shift in the cultural meaning of disability.” (pS71) For example, critical disability theorists have argued that universal design—the process of creating products and built environments to be usable by all people—must shift to treating disability itself as a valuable way of being in the world, one that societies must work to accept and preserve . A cultural shift such as this “would offer more inclusive ideological assumptions about disability, and not simply more accessible structures.” (p288) We suggest, therefore, that a missing piece in the continued struggle against structural injustice may be a social justice framework that is inclusive of PWD and makes an explicit commitment to promoting equity.…”

Taking into Account Sensory Knowledge

“…to consider technologies only as a way to rehabilitate or cure disabled bodies [29,28]. This is the basis of their criticism of Universal Design [90,34] which, they argue, erases disability instead of valuing a diversity of embodiments and abilities. In turn, it reinforces discourses about what kinds of bodies are "better": the materiality of design shapes discourses and self-perceptions.…”