Future Inclusive

What is Inclusive Design?

An Inclusive environment is one that can be used by everyone, regardless of age, gender, or disability. It is made up of many elements such as society's and individual's attitudes the design of products and communications and the design of the built environment itself. It recognises and accommodates differences in the way people use the built environment and provides solutions that enable all of us to participate in mainstream activities equally, independently, with choice and with dignity.

An inclusive environment considers people's diversity and breaks down unnecessary barriers and exclusions in a manner that benefits us all. This is significant because although society and individuals have invested heavily in enabling people to manage their personal circumstances effectively (e.g. by caring for older people or providing aids and adaptations for disabled people), many people remain unnecessarily 'disabled' by ill-conceived environments. As a result many people cannot take full responsibility for themselves and are prevented from contributing to society.

This is best illustrated by looking at how access needs of disabled people have been accommodated in recent years. Disabled people's needs are often considered separately from other groups of people and often after the design of a building has been completed. Solutions often lead to separate facilities, such as platform lifts or ramps for wheelchair users located on one side of a stepped entrance. Children's needs are often ignored altogether, for example, wash-hand basins in public toilets are usually too high. Baby changing facilities are sometimes located in the ladies toilet but not in the gents, preventing fathers from using this facility.

Which user groups should I focus on in this competition?

Inclusive Design reveals that understanding the needs of 'critical users' leads to a fuller understanding of the wider population.

Trying to consider the needs of everyone is a difficult and complex task so, within the remit of this competition, applicants are asked to focus their attention on the needs of disabled people and learn through this experience.

You could address the needs of a combination of disabled users or one in particular.

It is important however to show how your proposals / project meets the needs of a wider group. i.e. show how specific problems can generate solutions that meet a wide range of users needs.

Information resources

We strongly advise you to go out and talk directly to people with disabilities - tell them what you are working on, show them your work in progress. You might find someone in your family or immediate neighbourhood with a disability who is willing to describe their personal experience of dealing with the built environment or you might contact disabled groups in your local community.

Why adopt Inclusive Design?

Within the context of transport/built environment education, the most pervasive argument to teaching/ learning inclusive design is an ethical one based on the belief that access to the transport/built environment is a fundamental human right.

However, whilst empathy for users and a belief in equality may be motivating factors for some students and professionals, Inclusive design also makes strong social, economical and sustainable sense, which, in turn, is reinforced by our legislative framework. The arguments for an inclusive approach are summarised below:

The sustainable argument

• Transport/built environments which are inaccessible or exclude people lead to isolated and poorly interconnected communities.
• Sustainable communities are achieved through the creation of inclusive environments which:
• encourage neighbourhoods to evolve and flourish, by supporting and facilitating change.
• are flexible and "organic", growing and responding to their communities and thus less likely to become redundant or abandoned.
• enable interaction and socialisation with others in the surrounding community.
• allow people to exercise choice, integrate, participate and contribute, regardless of their age, gender or circumstance.
• A community rooted within an inclusive environment finds it easier to develop both formal and informal networks. Inevitably, this results in a balanced, healthy, less resource-hungry and thus sustainable community.

The professional argument

• The substance of the moral argument is embedded in the codes of conduct of built environment professional institutions.
• For example:
• Standard 5 of the Code of Practice produced by the Architects Registration Board states: "In carrying out or agreeing to carry out professional work, architects should pay due regard to the interests of anyone who may reasonably be expected to use or enjoy the products of their own work."
• The codes of practice of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (2001), the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Institute of Civil Engineers state, that their members should operate within an equal opportunities framework, and have a sense of responsibility for the way in which their professional actions impact on both clients and users of the built environment.
• Ultimately, a professional is defined and shaped as much by their integrated ethical approach, as they are by their skills and knowledge.

The economic argument

• Where the transport/built environment is inclusive, it allows more people to access it, work there, pay taxes and buy consumables and services.
• Designing inclusively can be understood as an opportunity to expand markets, increase business profitability and corporate reputation.

Is there an implied cost to Inclusive Design?

• In reality, many aspects of inclusive design have no cost at all, eg when decorating a room the choice of colour and tone of paint will not affect cost but will affect the usability of the area for visually impaired people.
• Case studies also show that, where inclusive design costs more in the short term, it costs less in the long term by increasing profitability through decreasing life time management costs.

Costs associated with failing to design inclusively are:

• cost of bad publicity associated with poor design solutions,
• the creation of hard to let buildings and poor economic viability,
• the costs associated with the need to undertake remedial works,
• the costs of litigation,
• costs associated with providing care or support to people who are unable to or can no longer use these environments independently or safely.

Integrated into funding opportunities

• Bodies funding building and research in the built environment (eg Design Council, National Lottery, Research Councils etc) have begun to embed the concept of inclusion into their aims and funding criteria.
• Increasingly, projects attracting central government funding are only successful if they demonstrate exemplary practice in relation to inclusive design.

The wider view:

The impacts on society of failing to create a more inclusive environment can lead to high levels of poverty, sickness and benefit dependency. The real question is not 'how can we afford an inclusive environment?' but rather 'how can we not afford to create inclusive environments?'

The legal argument

• The transport/built environment is framed as much by its hard physical edges and the aims of individuals as it is by legislation.
• Legislation addressing; race, sex and disability discrimination, Health and Safety, SENDA (Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001), Building Regulations, Approved Document M in England and Wales, and recommendations such as British Standard 8300 are all focused on protecting the civil rights and welfare of those who make, use and maintain the built environment.
• In particular, the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 will have a far-reaching impact on the work of transport/built environment professionals.
• The DDA rests specifically on the legal interpretation of the nature of what is "reasonable", in terms of achieving an inclusive environment.
• The precise nature of what is 'reasonable' under the legislation will evolve, as the courts interpret the legislation and social attitudes about the nature of reasonableness in themselves move on.
• Consequently, transport/built environment professionals will need to keep abreast of changing views of what is regarded as reasonable and advise their client accordingly. In addition, they will have to educate public opinion about what is possible in terms of improving levels of inclusiveness.
• The important point to glean from the new legislative situation is that just meeting the minimum standards will no longer be sufficient.

How does Inclusive Design impact on teaching and learning?

In order to develop an inclusive approach, experience has shown the most effective way to learn is to work directly with critical users (in this instance, disabled people). The Future Inclusive competition strongly advocates this approach. However inclusive design teaching / learning has an impact not only on what, but how you learn / teach.

Following is a brief outline of the strategies required when working with users and the inclusive skills required to support inclusive design.

Working with users

Defining roles
Having identified critical users for the project (sheet three), it is important to clarify the roles and expectations of all those involved. Be clear about the intent and limitation of the project to avoid unrealistic expectations between the parties involved.

Degrees of contact with users
If the project is limited in time and the logistics of organising extensive contact with users is problematic, other approaches can be adopted like observing and listening, acting advocate to a critical user or simply talking with disabled people.

User feedback
Users' feedback should occur at all stages of the process, not just at the initial briefing stage. Occasionally, teachers are concerned that involving users in the evaluation process of a project may lead to conflicting or confusing advice. This can be avoided by making a distinction between summative (i.e. giving a mark) and formative assessment (i.e. giving feedback) and involving users only in latter. Any contrast or contradiction between the teacher's and the user's perception of a student's project can then form part of the project dialogue and learning.

Other sources of information
Whilst users and user groups are likely to be a good source of practical immediate solutions, the built environment professional's skill lies in placing such solutions within the longer term and wider needs of the community. Therefore it is important to access secondary sources of up-to-date information on users' needs (see sheet 6 for potential resources).

Inclusive skills

Team working skills
Inclusive design is about more than just design. All of those involved in the chain that briefs, funds, designs, builds, provides products for, manages and maintains built environments should develop strong team working skills and understand their own role. This ensures that an environment, which is designed and built to be inclusive, is managed in an inclusive way across its life span. Hence, it is important that courses/projects addressing inclusive design provide an interdisciplinary and multi professional learning environment. There is often more demand for conflict management skills within an inclusive process and a need for phased compromises, than immediate solutions.

Inclusive methods of representation/ communication
Inclusive design draws on the knowledge and input of everyone who uses the built environment, not simply for egalitarian reasons, but because long after a building's use has changed and the designer's conceptual ideas have faded, it is user's experience of the space that persists. Bringing users into the formative assessment of projects naturally leads to students to find and develop ways to communicate and represent their ideas in accessible and inclusive ways.

Resources and references

Inclusive / universal design education web resources:

CEBE Website: http://ctiweb.cf.ac.uk
contains information on inclusive design from which much of the information in this pack is summarised.

Universal Design Education Online: http://www.udeducation.org
The site is designed for use by staff and students (of any age and stage), and user/experts. It features a variety of materials for a range of disciplines, levels, and interests eg course modules, sample assignments, and evaluation methods; content resources such as computer animations and renderings of excellent examples of universal design; full text of classic universal design writings; an annotated bibliography of other available materials; and links to relevant resources. The website is peer reviewed and invites submission by teaching staff and students.

DraWare Project:
The European Community funded the DraWare Project at the School of Architecture, University College, Dublin, Ireland. It was a two-year research project, from 1988 to 2000, to experiment with teaching methods that would lead to the creation of a more universally usable environment. Useful resource for teachers in particular.

The TRACE Website offers extensive References & Resources on Universal Design: http://www.trace.wisc.edu/world/gen_ud.html

Inclusive Design Education Resource, UK based and found at: http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/About-Design/Design-Techniques/Inclusive-design/

The Global Universal Design Educators Network and its monthly Online News is based at The Universal Design Network: http://www.universaldesign.net
The site contains a searchable archive of all the previous issues of the Global Universal Design Educator's Online News, an interactive forum page for discussion, and links to key international universal design resources.

The AAOutils Design for All Project: http://www.anlh.be/aaoutils/en/projet.htm
This is a pan-european project based in Belgium, Denmark, France and Poland. The main objective of the Aaoutils project is to design innovative teaching tools based on the concept of architecture accessible to all. The Project is targeted initially at architectural students, practising architects, in the context of ongoing training and architectural teachers. It is a 2 year project and will finish June 2003. The website includes a report, 'Teaching Universal Design. Global Examples of Projects and Models for teaching Universal Design at Schools of Design and Architecture'. This can be found at: http://www.anlh.be/aaoutils/aaoutils/examples.PDF (Adobe Acrobat).

Archvoices: http://www.archvoices.org
A US based independent think tank on architectural education has within its resources a useful section on universal design at: www.archvoices.org which includes some essays and further references.

Inclusive / universal design education published material:

Christophersen, Jon., (Ed.) 2002. "Universal Design 17 ways of Thinking and Teaching." Husbanken, Norway. Available at Husbanken Website: http://www.husbanken.no/Toppmeny/English/~/media/Toppmeny/Engelsk/7f34%20pdf.ashx.

Jones, L. 2001. "Integrating Universal Design into the Interior Design Curriculum." In Preiser, W.F.E. and Ostroff, E. (Eds.) Universal Design Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Morrow, R. 2001. "Inclusion as a Critical Tool in Design Education." In Preiser, W.F.E. and Ostroff, E. (Eds.) Universal Design Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Steinfeld, S. and Tauke, B.. "Universal Designing." In Christophersen, Jon., Ed. Universal Design 17 ways of Thinking and Teaching. Husbanken, Norway, 2002.

Tauke, B.. 2001. "Curriculum Models Project," and "Design and Diversity: Universal Design in University General Education." Proceedings, Inclusion By Design conference, Montreal, Canada.

Welch, Polly (Ed.). 1995. Strategies for Teaching Universal Design. Boston, MA: Adaptive Environments and Berkeley, CA: MIG Communications. Available online at: http://www.adaptenv.org.

Welch, P. 2001. "Teaching Universal Design in the U.S." In Preiser, W.F.E. and Ostroff, E. (Eds.) Universal Design Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Proceedings from the 2nd global conference on Universal Design (June 2000): 'Designing for the 21st II Conference' can be found at: http://www.adaptenv.org.

Access resources:

The Access Directory: http://www.dptac.gov.uk/accessdir.htm
is a tool to search a database of references of accessibility guidance for the built environment. Each guidance document is summarised to help you decide whether it will be useful for you.

Code of Practice on Access and Mobility: http://www.accesscode.info
This is an advisory website reflecting UK best practice and current statutory requirements for the design of accessible buildings, structures, highways and transportation.

JMU Access Partnership: http://www.jmuaccess.org.uk
A not for profit access consultancy working to promote inclusive environments through consultancy, training, policy and research. Access publications including Building Sight, Sign Design Guidelines and quarterly Access Journal.

Centre for Accessible Environments: http://www.cae.org.uk
Access consultancy, information and publications including Access by Design Journal.

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