Episode 57: Conversation 1: Access Washing with Karen Braitmayer and Natasha Trotman

Jos: Welcome to the first podcast conversation where we will be exploring emerging intersections across accessibility, disability, culture, and design. Beyond the conventions of functional access, these discussions are inherently interdisciplinary, offering different perspectives from both within and outside architectural discourse and practice.

Aimi: We have invited interlocutors who are either a designer, a theorist, or both to draw out the productive frictions around the concept of access. 

Jos: What do we mean by productive frictions? I come from an architectural background, and architects often think about accessibility as merely legal or compliance concerns.

Disability then gets reduced to a collection of individual medical problems, which get categorized by type your blind, your deaf, your wheelchair user, and then there's a kind of functional access problem, which is then solved through so-called design solutions.

There are many disabled architects already working at this intersection and who are aware of this problem, but alternative conceptions of accessibility have only recently emerged, and mainly from disabled experts working from outside of architecture. 

Aimi: So what does this mean in terms of how we bring the valuable design knowledge of a diverse range of disability experiences into architecture?

Which so far has very minimal effects on architectural discourse and practice. How can we actually make some impact and have a discussion in this series? And through conversations across and between these different understandings of disability, architecture, and access, we wanna open up variations and tensions in these approaches, not as a problematic conflict, but as productive frictions, which can lead us to deeper, more useful and collaborative understandings.

I'm Aimi Hamraie. I'm a disabled designer and researcher, and I direct the critical design lab, which does projects on accessibility through the framework of disability culture. I'm also a Canada research chair and Technology Society and Disability at York University in Toronto. 

Jos: And I'm Jos Boys. I'm a design activist over many years.

I have a background in feminist and community-based architectural practices in the uk, including being part of Matrix Feminist Design Collective in the 1970s and eighties. And then I co-founded and since 2007, have co-directed the Ordinary Architecture Project, which brings the creativity of disabled artists, designers, and architects into collaboration with built environment, education and practice.

Jos: Today, we've invited Karen Meyer, founder and managing principal of Architecture and Access Studio Pacifica based in the US to be in conversation with Natasha Trotman, an international equality designer based in the UK.

So, I'd like to start with you, Karen. Can you tell us something about your practice?

Karen: Sure. I think of myself as an architect and an accessibility consultant. I am a lifelong wheelchair user, and I have severe hearing loss and I grew up well before any US legislation, you know, that encouraged federal buildings to be accessible or just said, well, children to be mainstreamed in the neighborhood classrooms and so forth.

So I am of the generation who is still happy to see curb cuts in accessible parking spaces? In my day-to-day life, I am also encouraged by a younger group of disabled advocates who expect those as minimums and demand more. We definitely have a way to go here in the US. As an architect, I came to see accessibility as something I was particularly qualified to promote once I had been practicing in the field for a while.

I believe strongly that having design team members with lived experience enhances our work product. My small consultancy does focus on code compliance consulting. Plus we believe that the codes here in the US are kind of the basement level, and we aim for levels above that. We develop our recommendations to go beyond through engagement with the disability community.

Lots of listening, learning, and iterating with a diverse group at the design table. 

Jos: Thank you, Karen. That's a really great start. And now Natasha, if you could introduce yourself. 

Natasha: Hello. It's great to be here with you all. I'm Natasha Trotman. I'm a designer and researcher. My practice explores extending the frontiers and knowledge around pan disability and neurodivergence.

Marginalized experiences, body minds and reframing mainstream notions of equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion. And I do this via an intersectional design lens. I do transdisciplinary work as well. I work across sectors. This includes heritage education, the arts, local government, and have various hats.

It includes, working with for example, heritage Welcome Collection and being one of the co-designers and co-developers for the social justice curriculum. I sit on quite a few boards and panels as well, including the inclusive design review panel for local government. I'm really an advocate for authentic co-production, and I work with lots of different types of people and groups and communities. 

Aimi: Wonderful. Thank you so much to both Karen and Natasha for your introductions. We're really excited to have you here with us. And when we were putting this series together, you were the first people that we thought of as wanting to have in conversation and to just kind of see what conversation emerges.

So we'll start by zooming out a little bit and we're interested in hearing your thoughts very generally about the concept of access and as we've sort of been saying in these introductions, very often when we think about access, the first thing we think about is the codes and standards. And some people's work is within the realm of codes and standards.

Some people think we should only do codes and standards. Other people wanna go beyond the codes and standards, or they find the approach that standards promotes to be too limiting. There are some people maybe in more academic realms who say that we shouldn't focus so much on access from a functional perspective.

So like what Access does, and we should focus more on what access means for example, from a political or cultural or aesthetic perspective. And. I personally don't think that these things are at odds with each other at all. I see them on a spectrum and there's some really unexpected ways that they intersect with each other.

So if access is a spectrum where one side is code compliance and the other is the beyond, and that might include like the political, cultural aesthetic parts of access, where do you fall on that spectrum? So, we'll start with Natasha on this one.

Natasha: Where do I fall within the spectrum of this? All over it. To be honest, I do a lot of different things for me. I've written down like function, form, and meaning within design. As you've mentioned, you know, there's the whole thing about meaning. And for me, that also taps into value systems. So for me, within the transdisciplinary work that I do and the work I do across sectors, a lot if it's like bridging, braiding, weaving through translation, lots of different types of values, and just ensuring that nothing's lost in translation.

As I mentioned before, you know, that involves like local government. It involves heritage, it involves communities and making the case sometimes, but it has to be in a way that people understand what that value is. And I do a lot of different things including therapeutic arts, so I'm also a therapeutic artist.

Practitioner. I do my best to build in trauma informed approaches. But obviously that's not a one person job for me, it takes three pathways, and I also knit those together. So that's a personal, professional, collective slash community approach as well.

Aimi: Yeah. Great. What about you, Karen? Where do you fall on the access spectrum? 

Karen: Well, I think in my intro, I probably alluded to the fact that we root our work in codes and standards. That's really where we started. But here at Studio Pacifica, we spend a lot of time helping our clients who are mostly other architects, really understand the why, because I think the numbers, you know, codes

are really all about numbers. Like if you meet that number, you have complied, but if you read the code carefully, there are clues for how to do better. Right within. So if they say there's a range or this is a maximum or a minimum, maybe bigger or less is better. So we spend a lot of time helping our clients understand why those numbers are there, because they are based in some research.

And here in the US the model codes have continued to use additional research on some people with disabilities, we do recognize that there's communities that have been overlooked, but there's new research, new data out there that's helping inform some changes in those numbers and why is really important.

And if we can get our clients to understand the why, the value to people with disabilities, then they kind of come alongside us and together we work to do better. But I also wanna point out that in the US we have the international symbol of accessibility, the little wheelchair symbol, right? And people think that if that's applied to something, then it for sure is accessible.

And the average person with disability doesn't understand that there no one who gives that a seal of approval. So you could have a manufacturer put that symbol on. Let's just say their sink and then an architect could think I put that sink in any old way I want, and it's accessible. Well, that's not true.

So we spend a lot of time vetting for our clients the way things are put together. Because otherwise it isn't really accessible. So that word accessible has so many different meanings. There's a code compliance meaning, but there's also a colloquial meaning like is it available, is it usable, and does it include everybody and

it doesn't always work that way. So when people say, we want you to make that accessible, then often we say, so tell me what accessible means to you, because it doesn't mean the same thing to everybody.

Aimi: Yeah. That's so interesting Karen. And to me, kind of part of what I hear in that is that compliance with codes and standards isn't actually just a matter of checking boxes.

There's a cultural component to it that is, is around, what Natasha's framing as meaning. And we may see, I don't know if you, either of you have experienced this, that the longer these codes exist, the way that people understand the words in them and the concepts in them may change too. So that like over time the understanding of disability may shift and the understanding of accessibility may shift related to values and societal willingness to uphold the standards.

Natasha: So for me, I'm like, I hope no one has to create a new path for this. Hopefully they can build on what I've created. But to do that, you need to be able to embed it. So even if they can bring that up and it helps them make the case for the change that they're trying to implement. In that regard, the policy's been quite helpful.

Karen: In our work, in our consultancy, we do believe very strongly in, in recognizing that, you know, as I said, the numbers are just the base and that there's reasons and ways that you can learn more about how the disability community can benefit from the application of those numbers in the right way.

We recognize that those documents are ever evolving. Not fast enough in my opinion, but I started out working with my state government on the development of their codes and standards, just as the a DA came into place federally and we were trying to align our state regulations with the a DA.

And I happened to live in a state that was the first state to have their accessibility regulations certified as aligned with the federal. So I worked really hard on that. And then over time I served 13 years in the federal agency, the US Access Board that worked on additional guidance that could be turned into legislation around accessibility, not just the a DA, but all the sort of extended regulations, things like medical equipment and public rights of way. So it's not just about buildings and facilities, even though as an architect, that's kind of my focus. I think we have to understand that the development of these regulations here in the United States is on a consensus process, so we always bring together a wide range of individuals that are impacted by those.

And so for example, if you're doing a building regulation, you're bringing together people that the designers, the builders, the people with disabilities, the equipment manufacturers or product manufacturers, and everybody has to work together to come up with a positive solution. And then unfortunately, that doesn't always mean everybody gets everything they want, but you're trying to find that middle ground.

And you also bring in research data that might inform. Like why is a change beneficial and stuff? So I've come to understand a lot of the core, like where did some of this come from and where can we do better? I think we need additional research to better, inform both the federal regulations and the model codes which are adopted by our states.

I think there's a lot that can be done, and we want more people with disabilities in all of those areas. Like we want representatives of the design community who happen to have disability as a part of their identity, and we want manufacturers. Who happened to be, you know, this is one way of like, kind of front loading the process to better engage.

Aimi: Yeah. Thank you so much. So we wanna focus our conversation now on a provocation for what it might mean to think beyond. The standard or the code in that way that it's typically understood as like very solid and unchanging and imposed from the outside. We're all here because we believe in access and we work on access and fight for access.

And there are also sometimes ways that the concept of access may be taken in directions that we don't want or don't agree with, or that don't align with our values. And so the disability activist, Stacy Park, Millburn and also the Disabled scholar, LJ Jaffe, they've both written about this concept of access washing, which is when accessibility gets watered down or co-opted or used as a pretense for something else.

Sometimes something that's detrimental to disabled people. And so it's similar to the idea of greenwashing and sustainability when something is tagged as green, even though it's very resource intensive or not sustainable. And maybe it's related to the example you were giving of the sink earlier, Karen.

And so an example that Milburn gives, which I find really interesting is that sometimes cities that have a lot of unhoused people who use the sidewalk for like hanging out or for pitching a tent or something like that. We'll use the ADA to justify sweeps on unhoused people, even though many people who don't have access to stable housing are themselves disabled, this prevents this group of disabled people from using public spaces.

In a similar way, LJ Jaffe writes about how institutions like universities will. Promote how accessible they are in their public relations materials, even at the same time that they do research that leads to building bombs or doing other things that actually cause disability and harm people, like military technologies and things like that.

And Jos, this concept of access washing is also something that people talk about in the UK context in a different way, right? 

Jos: Yes. I think in the UK context it's very often it overlaps with some of the things that you've mentioned, but I think it is been the experience of the DisOrdinary Architecture Project that some of the people we work with, it's like it's a level of appearances. They want to be seen to be doing things, but that is about having big wheelchair user symbols and publicizing a lot of what they're doing on social media and not actually being interested in doing it or the impact. There's a kind of version of it, which is just at the level of appearances, I think.

Karen, what do you think about this concept of access washing? Is it something that echoes with your work? 

Karen: I have to be upfront and share that it, I was not familiar with this term, when I was invited to this presentation and actually thought, oh my gosh, you need younger people in this conversation because it's not something that I was familiar with.

But I brought it up to a couple of friends who are accessibility specialists and my daughter who's a person with disability and they want Oh yeah. It's like that bench that you saw on the internet with like the gap in the bench and it's got a little international symbol on it. So, that's an example because they're trying to prevent unhoused people from being able to sleep in the park.

And if I had seen that on the internet, I have to admit, I would've thought it was a, joke or a meme because who did they have at the table when they designed that bench? A wheelchair user would not ever be able to sit comfortably in that gap, and we all know that if you just add a little bit of a

flat, solid area off the end of any park bench a wheelchair user can sit very comfortably next to their colleague. So this is an unneeded product, in my opinion.

Because that doesn't seem to me to be an accessible solution. So I guess I didn't realize there was a term for it, but I would certainly question those kinds of justifications for decisions or choices made. 

Jos: Thank you. That's a really interesting answer, Natasha, in terms of what do you think about this concept of access washing?

Natasha: Yeah, the concept is useful. I think it's a bit like the models, the whole thing about like when companies say we use the social model, but then when you look at their processes, like I was talking about the journey, like the, maybe the outcome might be social model, but the journey towards it was like charitable model.

Like it was not empowering for anyone really. And like for me, one of the things where something can intersect and be like a triple quadruple barriers, like when age, race, ability, or disability, all of that interlocks. For example, if somebody creates a scheme and they're like, oh, it's so accessible, like we're just trying to make things better for everyone, but you need to be this age and do this and do this and do this, but it's all based on norms. It normed like developmental arcs.

If you don't hit those milestones, you are excluded. And when I contact them and ask them to unpack why, or you challenge them when they're trying to push this concept and get sign off, like there's not much rationale behind it other than the norms culture. So yes, it, that, that is access washing, because really who's gonna have the space, the time, the spoons to be able to

traverse all of that and hit all those milestones and then go for that thing just to add another layer. A lot of the time, many of the people that I work with that have multiple identities happening all at once, we are doing it in burnout a lot of the time as well, because if we don't do it, like if we can't hold that space, then you know the pathway can get erased again.

And then you'll have like more normed, developmental arc type things popping up. So yeah, it's really useful. Hopefully once it's in the awareness of more people, they can then use that to inform their approaches. 'cause I think a lot of the time it's well intentioned and they think, you know, this is great, you know, we are doing this and we are acknowledging this.

And they don't see the layers and the nuance. And so I don't think it's intentionally flattening things down and building in more barriers by doing that. 

Jos: Natasha, again, I just wanted to follow up on that about some of the things, because I feel like you, you have developed ways in which it may be exhausting, but you do, like you work out ways to help move people on.

So there might be people who start, or they're well intentioned, but at one level, there's a little bit of tick boxing. It's like race, neurodivergence, you know? And I just wondered whether you had some, an example or two of where you'd felt that you'd been able to really shift people away from that kind of understanding?

Natasha: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Most of the time, because of my positionality, a lot of the time making the case, it requires living examples. And some people call it receipts, whatever, whatever works. For example, if you are asked about your access rider and you give it and then it's not honored or worse used to further disable you, that's not okay.

You have to unpack it in a way that they can understand that giving them that they need to do something helpful and impactful with it. Also, there's a whole thing in regards to financial inclusion as well, which. Is, I think lately in the UK it's really been brought into focus due to the recommended cuts and everything going on with PIP and things like that.

And people pushing for their rights within the various communities I'm a member of. So again, you are asking somebody, oh, well we'd love your input. Yeah, you can expense it. It's you know, it's all the way in Timbuktu. 

What, how are they gonna do it? Magic, are they alchemist? Are they gonna alchemize the money off in there to get the cab? So it's just things like that. So I'm like, no, you need to consider this. You need your budget

put aside for that. Do it. Just sort the cab out. Get them there. Let them do the work, consult, engage and everything like that, and then get them home because probably by the end of it, they won't have any spoons anyway. Just making it real, I guess, for people. 'cause I think sometimes, you know, a lot of theory when it's in practice, it's a bit different.

Aimi: Natasha, I wanna pick up on something you said earlier about norms and the kind of norms that designers and other people use to assume like

whose gonna use this thing that we're creating and what are their life circumstances and where are they coming from and stuff. I kind of wonder if maybe the, what the idea of access washing is trying to get at is trying to have us think about who do we usually think can benefit from access?

And then how do we even have to push that further? So before, Karen, you were talking about how, you know, whoever is building these anti homeless benches is not actually thinking about disabled people either. So it's actually just like a less accessible item, even though it has the international symbol of access on it.

I wonder how we can continue that line of thinking, if we think about the forms of access that tend to exist and then the interventions that have to be made. Karen, you said before that for some types of standards, there's research that's integrated about certain disability communities, but there's still

others that there's probably like so much evidence about in the world, but it's not integrated into the standards. So this is really a question for both of you, who can be excluded from access as we currently understand it sometimes, and how can we expand that or kind of make the concept of access itself.

I don't want to like just use the word inclusive 'cause I, I think that we're even talking about something that goes beyond that, but something that's maybe like more capacious and expanded. 

Karen: So certainly within the US the only community that's gotten a fair shake in focus in codes and standards is the mobility disability community, and people with sensory or invisible disabilities are kind of left on the wayside.

There is information and design principles that have been posited by those communities. For example, the guidelines for Deaf Space, which were developed with people from that community designers, people with lived experience. That is, to me, that's like, we should be doing that or finding ways to support that kind of effort for other identity groups.

Absolutely. I. But I also think there's a little bit of a problem in the whole idea of codes and standards, assuming that there is one answer that serves everybody, and that is a, a false assumption, uh, that that's why I think we promote providing choice, making sure that when you are creating an environment, you're giving people options for how to engage because everybody's different. 

Aimi: Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Natasha, do you have any thoughts about this? 

Natasha: Yes I do. As I mentioned before, a lot of my staff is like theory and practice mixed together.

Sometimes what seems okay in theory doesn't really always pan out. In practice and you know, you have to do a bit of dynamic risk, assessing change things up. For example, like even today I do a lot of different work and this one was with a disability org - disabled led - and we are working towards assessing things within the public realm and built environment and stuff, but

people were sharing was the challenges that they had faced to get there, to get to the location. You know, so again, you know, inclusion and access management plan. Maybe, maybe they should have, you know, provided more support to get us there. But the thing was, what one person said that really brought it into focus for me was that their support had been cut.

And there was no real explanation as to why. But you know, they really went to great lengths to get to the location today and what we decided to do together, 'cause we are all neurodivergent and disabled, was to help each other. As best we can. And this person, they didn't have their support because obviously their, their thing had been cut like they said.

So we, you know, we all did what we could and I had to take some time out and go to the sensory room and quiet room, you know, just to recalibrate. But I think in regards to who can be excluded, I think it's a continuum of access and I think we're all in flux a bit in the global north. A lot of the populations aging.

It's a shared in regards to access in, in many senses. So I think there are lots of people that maybe are underserved right now, but I think if we can build in the ways to create these agile teams and get everybody in the room or online or what. And that's another thing as well, the digital divide, then more people can be included.

There's so many types of disability Neurodivergence acquired. Some people are born with them. There's multiples. Who can be excluded, everyone potentially. I think if we cater to the different stages of the continuum of access, almost like a life journey in regards to autism, for example, a lot of things in the UK it's like focused a lot on children and young people, but obviously people grow up and become adults.

So again, it's about, and for that, I worked on trying to map out that lifelong journey. And put things in place where there are provisions and support. So yes, I think everyone potentially can, depending on where you fall on the continuum. Yeah, so if we cater to the continuum, then whatever stage you are at in your life, you will have access and be supported.

I guess that's better practice or next practice. But yeah. 

Jos: What it brings up for me is that really important and famous. Disability Act, disability slogan, Nothing About Us Without Us. And I was just thinking, listening to both you, Karen and Natasha, that underlying this, it's like my experience with working with architects is that they rely on the standards and codes.

People who are really committed to this, because they don't know how to broaden their knowledge. They often don't have the time. The whole way that built environment education and practice works is like finding solutions really quickly. What are ways, and I how you do this already, Karen.

What are ways of bringing that hugely wide range of lived experience? .The journeys that Natasha's talking about? How we can have ways of accumulating like quite a rich data because it feels a lot with the data that we have that generated the standards is itself, quite mechanical.

Karen: Well, I'm not sure I agree with that statement. I think that the research that has been funded by, for example, the Access Board has indeed been focused on anthropometrics and that can be seen as mechanical. However, you know, thinking about the Deaf Space principles, which are, for those who don't know or aren't familiar with that term, it's a guideline that was developed about how

people in the deaf community engage and utilize space, and I think it's a powerful document because it shows us how we as designers can create environments that benefit of wide variety of people in a way that. Is different than just the numbers, door maneuvering clearance and turning space and things like that.

It's more about what makes people feel comfortable in the space, what makes them feel safe? How can they best communicate? How do you make the environment more comfortable for people who, for example, do all their communication? Visually, that's the direction I think we need to go is about engaging people with lived experience and designers to talk to each other, to think about what makes people feel safe, comfortable included.

So I don't quite know how you get that to happen without some institutional support, but the hope would be that we could increase guidance to the folks who are doing design, who don't necessarily have access or don't have the ability to engage a wide variety of disabled folks in their community. I don't believe it's true that there are not enough people with disabilities for an architect to engage with, but sometimes I do hear that, and I think if they can't reach out, we could create these guides that would help them understand a little bit more about what's beneficial. The last thing I just wanna say is that I think that one of the challenges with universal design principles is that

it doesn't really tell you whether you got there. Like you don't know whether you met the requirement. And for somebody who is designing and has no background or no access to people with disabilities, I've seen some really wacky stuff come out that is identified as universally designed. And I'm thinking, uh, really?

So that's why I'm a believer in having at least some numbers and criteria that kind of create that basement. 

Aimi: Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. I was thinking about what you just said, Karen, along with what Natasha said about designing for like a life spectrum.

And this is something that I write about in my book Building Access too. There's a lot of opportunity and also tension between trying to create as many versions of a usable thing as possible, and also trying to create standards that guide the quality of use and sometimes that produces constraints.

But also something I hear in both of your comments that I think is a really important idea maybe for the audience of this podcast to take away too, is that it's a question of. Also shifting who is an expert and what kinds of evidence can inform design. And for so long we have used anthropometrics and that's really important.

Obviously it's like guides the whole design of spatial volumes and stuff like that. But there are so many other types of knowledge that are useful for architecture and the deaf space example. Is a great example 'cause it's about how a disability culture like a deaf community that.

Orient space around language and embodiment created a new pattern language for architecture. And that's not something that a lot of architects and designers may know as possible. And I agree with you that I do hope that we see more versions of that for other disability communities as well. And so I wonder if there's anything else that you all wanna say about these questions of.

Who's an expert or what kinds of evidence could we be calling into design practice that are not currently part of the curriculum of a design school or even used for standards? 

Natasha: I've always found that there seems to be like a bit of a shadow element. So for example, what was a good approach in regards to dealing with these like shadow elements, which.

Cover economic threat, uncertainty anxiety around change and things like that. It's not strictly designed, but I think it's a useful model. The social justice curriculum, Wellcome collection, within that. In the early stages it was held. There was therapeutic practitioners, specialists creating this held aspect whilst also facilitating change or thinking or reframing and things like that.

And I think sometimes, especially like with organizations, I found that particular patterns occur and they reoccur across the different sectors. And it may be due to, as I mentioned before, the fear of economic threat, uncertainty and things like that. So just providing and building and designing in those aspects that deal with the very human side of the field, the craft or whatever it is you're specializing in.

I think that there has been some progress though, like past in the uk that we've got past 6, 4, 6 3. For the design, for the mind design for the built environment. Reba's got the inclusive design overlay. There are things popping up and that's good, but what I would say again in regards to like how we can make design even more inclusive and have even more pathways in is let's get those shadow aspects of power into focus, illuminate that, and also try to build in ways to seed space as well as make space. Because as I mentioned before, what I found is working on the ground practitioner, designer, and you know, as what I found is, you know, the model sounds like social model, but it's charitable model shaped. So, you know, but again, it's about power because people don't want to let go, or bring in those different pathways. 'cause they're like, how does that impact my relevancy? It's just adding, it's not taking away anything. So yeah, I think if we can build that in, that's what I do. I try to like build in those pathways, weave it in, do the transdisciplinary work do the advocacy work as well.

I do a lot of that in regards to the soft power. So you know, you're building disability culture and things like that and just shifting the dial a bit. So yeah, soft power helps with that. The seeding, I think the seeding space. Otherwise it's just a lot of like patterns that repeat again and again and again.

So yeah, how can we stop the patterns repeating, I guess is my question. I have a few approaches. I don't have all the answers, but yeah. What I'm doing so far is, so far so good. Well see. But yeah, seeding space, it's really important because, um. I've worked on something very recently and it was, it's been extremely innovative and lots of change making, but then right at the very end, 'bang' - the charitable model just locked straight back in and it was just like, that's unfortunate.

What did we learn from that? And my thoughts on it. But yeah, I mean, change was made, but again, you know, the complete power grab at the end. So learning how to seed space is great. 

Jos: I think that's really useful and for me that's a really interesting productive friction between that, kind of like the Welcome Trust, the Wellcome Collection in London and the UK is very interested in change making processes, so although there is design going on, they've got a permanent exhibition called Being Human, which has involved a lot of disabled artists and disabled designers and is trying to be a fully accessible exhibition.

It is focused on that kind of change making. And then for me, something like the Deaf Space based guidelines. I'm not saying, you know, one's better or the other, but you know, it is about a subject that doesn't get talked about, about deaf people who sign, and then seeing that that is very spatial and doing that as design guidelines.

But for me, they're like they do some things really well, and then other things not so well, and it's Karen. I guess I want to go back to you on the Deaf Space guidelines because I do think they're a truly wonderful thing, but I also think that they're not necessarily very intersectional. So they're very much around deaf people who sign and not necessarily deaf people who don't.

And in terms of how they align with other kind of access requirements. It's like some of it's that, isn't it about how different access requirements are also maybe quite contradictory. They may not all align nicely. What's your response to that?

Karen: Well, if you are, appointing to the Deaf Space principles, it is true that their focus is on folks who communicate through ASL and and have those needs. But I think there actually is overlap. So for example, the guidance on how to create comfortable lit spaces that might be easier on the eyes, you might say this is also beneficial to folks in the low vision community.

I think what hasn't been identified is what parts of all of these guidelines are multi-sectional or intersectional or whatever you wanna call it, that's where we need folks from other identities to come in and say, oh, you know what? Actually that really works well for me. Or, okay, that one, that one we don't like.

We need more information about that. And that's why I say we aren't there yet. We've got a lot of work to do. I think it's really important. To remember that I, I believe architects have an ethical obligation to be designing for all the people that use their buildings. And there's a lot of focus in the US about making sure that our buildings support the environment, which is great, but in my mind, like we gotta support the people who are coming in the door.

And Natasha, you talked about that range of age and ability and your socioeconomic background and your race or your culture, everything. Those things need to be understood and applied in our buildings. So this is where I think accessible design is good design. This is where architects do good work to try to make

projects be better. The problem is that we don't have enough people who understand what that is, all that diversity in our profession. So representation matters. We don't have enough of that. And so one of the other things that I do is talk a lot about how we need to encourage young people with disabilities who have an interest in design to come join

the field, like join the design field and there are too many people down the food chain in a student's life that say, oh, architecture, I don't think you can do that. 'cause maybe you can't climb a ladder or you maybe can't draw well because of your fine motor skills. Technology has changed. So if there's anybody listening out there who has anybody has had someone say to them, oh, I don't think you can be a designer, come talk to me.

Because honestly, I feel like there are ways to go around all those supposed barriers so that you can contribute. I think design is about having great ideas. And try to getting that down in a way that somebody can build it. And we need more people who understand different aspects of the world to engage in that process.

Aimi: Wonderful. Thank you. Are there any final thoughts or takeaways that you all would like to leave us with? 

Natasha: Yeah, we're more than our productivity. I just thought I needed to say that. As I mentioned before, I engage with a wide range of people, and what I found was with the, the younger people, even if they have an interest in designing the arts, what I found is, um, from a social education perspective, they are encouraged into avenues that are deemed more productive than the arts and design.

You know, like, oh, wouldn't you rather. I, it's fine if they do, but you know, if they do want to go and work in the shop and, you know, stack the shelves and things like that there's something for all of us. But sometimes ableism comes into play and they're like, oh, wouldn't you rather just do that instead of the arts or design or what have you.

So yeah, we are more than our productivity and also reframing what is productivity exactly. You know, or value. So again, yeah, it's coming back to the value systems. So maybe, yeah, we need to band together and work on these value systems because yeah, young people there, the young people I'm engaging with, they're being steered down other paths and then the normed arcs on not helping. So by the time they get to the point where they can apply, they've aged out. 

Karen: Natasha, I think you said that so well. I was approached the other day by a young person who said that they had an injury during their early start in their architecture education, and they were advised that they should change Majors or change direction because they would not be able to function as an architectural professional.

And I was aghast. I really believe that. The process of design is about the ideas that you can generate. And since so many people with disabilities have been hacking their environment anyways, just to get through the world, which we know is not really built for us, right? I think they all have.

Like super great ideas and so we wanna harvest that how can we get more of that feedback, information lived, experience, whatever you wanna call it together, so that we can find those collaboratively, those solutions that are authentic and work for a broad group of people and provide choice. This has been such an interesting conversation and I, and thank you so much for involving me. 

Aimi: Thank you so much to both of you for being here. This was great. I learned so much.

outro music

Aimi: You've been listening to Disability Meets Architecture, a series of episodes of the Contra Podcast focused on the productive frictions within critical access theory.

Disability meets Architecture was created by Jos Boys from The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, and Aimi Hamraie from the Critical Design Lab and the Contra Podcast with support from Scar Barlay and Paul DeFazio, and funding from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Our editor is Ilana Nevins.

You can find out more about this project and our respective organizations on Instagram at Ordinary Architecture, at Critical Design Lab, and at Labs for liberation. The Contra Podcast is licensed under a creative commons attribution, non-commercial share, like International 3.0 license. That means you can remix, repost, or recycle any of the content.

As long as you cite the original source, aren't making money, you don't change the credits and you share it under the same license.

‍