REDESIGNING SPACES FOR ACCESSIBILITY- People with disabilities. Virtue Oboro
The holidays would be over in a few hours or days and as millions of us go back to work, school, business and other routines, there are people with disabilities who do not have this “luxury”. Their routine is literally staying home, begging or waiting hoping for what their next meal would be.
In October 2021, I led the Cerebral Palsy Prevention Campaign and engaged government officials such as House of Assembly members and stakeholders in my state in Nigeria during the project. They made promises to make buildings, schools and public places accessible to people with disabilities but unfortunately, several of these plans never come to reality because there are no clear paths on sustaining them in developing countries.
Even in developed countries, accessibility is still a problem!
In September 2022, I worked with my young team to redesign public spaces to increase access for people with disabilities and it was one of the most interesting yet eye-opening Design Thinking tasks I’d done in a couple of years!
We redesigned a school building with the aim of increasing accessibility while redesigning it.
We redesigned a school building with the aim of increasing accessibility while redesigning it.
From using empathy maps, representing each of the disabilities, I realized that over 87% buildings and public places in developing countries are not designed to provide access to disabled people. This is beyond having tramways for wheelchair users.
I’m talking about being able to access the car parks, the typography and colors used for visual communication, the noise from the banging of doors, anti slip hallway floors and several other factors! How about the assurance that elevators and lifts would be functional at all times as well as alternatives if they aren’t functional at any point in time? These problems were identified in a modern facility such as a school and I hope that our submission would prompt a redesigning of that building to ensure that everyone has access to it.
Imagine not being able to get on a bus or a taxi because your legs cannot climb the doorstep or that your child with a sensory impairment cannot go to school because other users of the banging noise of the opening and closing of doors in the building. Imagine that…
As you resume work, remember that there are people who cannot do same just because their proposed work spaces, school spaces, play spaces are not designed to even accommodate them in the first place.
I don’t know if its because of my area of work or just intuition but I would never walk into any public space or vehicle without observing all of these and then considering the possibilities for improvement on them.
Long ago, I used to think that it was purely the role of an architect to provide such solutions but I was wrong. The product designer/manager has a very huge role to play in this.
I’m open to working on or contributing to Design Briefs for anyone working on similar projects!
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