Thirty years on, the A.D.A. has reshaped American architecture and the way designers and the public have come to think about civil rights and the built world. We take for granted the ubiquity of entry ramps, Braille signage, push buttons at front doors, lever handles in lieu of doorknobs, widened public toilets, and warning tiles on street corners and subway platforms. [...] The A.D.A. has baked a more egalitarian aesthetic of forms and spaces into the civic DNA. — The New York Times

Ms. [Rita] Ebel, who has been in a wheelchair herself since a car accident 25 years ago, said the idea was born after a friend of hers, who is also in a wheelchair, said she could not get out of a shop with steps and had to enlist the help of four people to carry her chair down.

Ms Ebel then saw a picture in a medical journal for paraplegics, of a woman in an electric wheelchair going over a Lego ramp. — RTE News

Ask any disabled person about the gap between the ADA’s aspirations and their hard realities. We are often forced to stop in our tracks and weigh the chances of falling and suffering minor or serious injury against the need to go into a library, store, or post office. But it’s more than that. We believe strongly that we deserve a right to exist in the world. We’re just waiting for the rest of the world to truly believe this, too. — The Nation

Nearly thirty years after the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed, accessibility for disabled people both online and in public space remains severely insufficient. New York artist Shannon Finnegan and design historian Aimi Hamraie, who currently resides in Nashville, held a video chat on October 9 to discuss their respective artistic, activist, and historical takes on disability justice. — Art in America

Yes, messy sidewalks are hard. But so are shops and restaurants with steps at their entrances. So are blocks that lack curb cuts or have ones that are poorly designed. So are broken elevators. So is the fact that in L.A., if you’re a disabled person (which is what Radcliff calls himself rather than a person with a disability), you generally have to spend more on rent, because the properties covered by rent stabilization are older ones less likely to be accessible. — The Los Angeles Times

“I think it looks really beautiful," said Frank Wu, the president of Court Square Civic Association, a group in Long Island City that tries to encourage smart development. [...]

“There are a ton of stairs but only a single elevator,” he said, adding that accessibility has long been an issue in Long Island City, which has seen the number of young families with strollers balloon in recent years. — Gothamist

The MTA pledged Monday to fast-track subway access for people with disabilities by making 66 more stations easier to navigate as part of a new $51 billion, five-year spending plan...The promise comes as the MTA faces multiple lawsuits over the shortage of elevators in the subway system — THE CITY

The series served as an introduction to Universal Design, described the social model versus the medical model of Disability, and shared the specific needs and design strategies to accommodate both the Deaf/HoH as well as the Autistic and Neurodivergent communities. This series initiated a conversation reaching across Disabled communities, and demonstrates that while different Disabled communities’ needs may be different, the design solutions are often incredibly similar. — OLIN Labs

Space remains a vast, untamed place, penned in only by the limits of our own imaginations.

So why the hell are there so many staircases in space? [...]

Once you start realizing how many stairs there are stopping you in real life, it becomes impossible not to notice them existing in the sci-fi you adore. Turns out they’re everywhere [...] our sci-fi imitates a real-world reliance on steps and stairs in our architecture. — io9/Gizmodo

Most planners and architects can speak volumes about accessibility requirements [...].
Tamara Petrovic and Garner Oh, partners of the architecture and design firm 0 to 1, are intimately aware of such needs. To address their son’s difficulty with balance and motor skills, the pair developed a range of products for the home that transform his living environment into a safe and appealing space for all members of the family and resist the institutional aesthetic often seen in special needs products. — urbanomnibus.net

Enter Cities Unlocked, a project intended to help people with sight loss navigate cities. The brainchild of a blind Microsoft employee, it uses GPS, a 3D audio headset, and Bluetooth beacons, among other technologies. [...]

“I’m a blind person, I need to keep my ears open,” she says. The headset uses bone-conducting technology, in which vibrations create a “3D soundscape” around the user. — nextcity.org

In a recent opinion piece in The New York Times, geriatrician Louise Aronson advocated for a new type of building, one designed with an aging population in mind, which, she suggests, might be dubbed “silver” architecture. [...]

It being Veterans Day, this article got me thinking about architect Michael Graves, who recently designed a pair of houses for returning soldiers that follow through on many of Aronson’s suggested parameters for silver design. — smithsonianmag.com