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The museum’s other notable attribute is its high level of accessibility. The architects borrowed inspiration from the Guggenheim Museum, which invites visitors to take an elevator to the top floor and then descend along ramps as they explore galleries. There are no steps up or down, and the goal is to eliminate any differences in the museum experience among people with varying physical abilities. — The New York Times
For the NYT, Ray Mark Rinaldi reviews the DS+R-designed United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum with a special focus on accessibility. "Accommodations are the norm," Rinaldi writes. "Ramps are low-grade and extra wide to fit two wheelchairs at the same time. Sign language interpreters appear... View full entry
University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design (CED) Professor Emeritus Raymond Lifchez has donated $2.5 million to the college in order to create a new endowed teaching position focused on universal design. Previously on Archinect: "Unpacking The Spatial Implications Of... View full entry
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
Earning the nickname 'Lego Grandma,' Rita and her husband work together on the ramps, often spending two to three hours a day building them, reports RTE News. While wood or aluminum ramps would provide a proper solution, Rita says that the bright Lego "makes her message stand out and... View full entry
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
Writing in The Nation, author Elizabeth Guffey reflects on the ongoing accessibility failures that impede the everyday experiences of countless people in the United States despite the fact that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted 30 years ago. Guffey takes a look into the... View full entry
Representatives of the United States Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York and the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division announced today that Related Companies and ERY Vessel LLC have agreed to install a new accessibility platform at the Vessel in Hudson Yards... View full entry
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
Aimi Hamraie's 2017 book Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability explores the question of who counts as "everyone" according to architects of the Universal Design movement. Finnegan's artworks include pieces such as "Museum Benches," benches that are inscribed with... View full entry
Despite changes in technology and forms of representation, around the world, architectural models continue to address an important issue in aesthetic experience: Providing access to architecture for the visually impaired. "Whether it’s marveling at the height of the Eiffel... View full entry
New York City-based legal group Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) has filed a class action lawsuit against a collection of public agencies representing the borough of Queens, New York "challenging the inaccessibility" of the new Steven Holl Architects-designed Hunters Point Library, according... View full entry
“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
A much-lauded new library in New York City's Long Island City district designed by Steven Holl Architects might have serious shortcomings when it comes to accessibility and universal design. The library's fiction collections are organized along a set of tiered levels that can only be accessed... View full entry
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
"Making 66 more stations accessible would triple the number that had been tapped for Americans with Disabilities Act upgrades in the 2015-2019 capital plan," THE CITY reports. The planned upgrades are part of MTA's recently announced $54 billion capital improvement plan. View full entry
A battle over proposed design and safety upgrades to an out-of-compliance "stramp" design by Canadian architect Arthur Erickson from the 1970s is taking shape in British Columbia, Canada. Simon Scott, the director of Erickson's Foundation, said of the late architect: "He wanted to make public... View full entry
If we want everyone to participate in public life, we must design and build an inclusive public realm that is accessible to all. Public life can’t just be available to the abled, young, or healthy.
The sizeable global population of people with physical, auditory, or visual disabilities, autism or neurodevelopmental and/or intellectual disabilities, or neuro-cognitive disorders will face greater challenges if we don’t begin to more widely apply universal design principles
— American Society of Landscape Architects
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has published a guide to universal design meant to set the bar for universal accessibility in the landscape architecture realm beyond the largely quantitative requirements stipulated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A... View full entry
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
With the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act approaching, discussions that examine where design and accessibility intersect have increased in frequency. In June 2019, for example, OLIN Labs' hosted a lecture series covering a range of topics relating to the interconnected... View full entry
In 2019, inclusive spaces that are comprised of voices from the neurodiverse and disabled community are still extremely rare. Despite the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 29 years ago, neurodiverse and disabled communities continue to face collective discrimination from failures to accommodate in access, transportation, employment, education, and many other arenas. Unfortunately, the art world is no exception. — Hyperallergic
Emily Sara, a disabled, interdisciplinary artist and designer, penned an open letter calling on the art world for stronger support of the neurodiverse and disabled communities, whose everyday needs are often overlooked in American society. She names a few examples of how the art world... View full entry
Lucy Jones, founder of FFORA, a company whose "mission statement is simple, the world made accessible to all." After embracing a challenge by one of her professors at Parsons to design something that could change the world, the young designer began to talk to one of her family members who... View full entry
