Interviews

 

“Accessibility can be defined as the elimination of physical and social barriers, which may limit everyday activities of anyone.

In this sense, accessibility is not only to answer the needs of persons with disabilities.

Do you know that over 30% of the French population are affected, to different degrees, for one (or more) permanent or temporary disability and are therefore limited in their daily movements, in the access to services or in practice of activities ?

Each of us, because of illness, accident or ageing, may be faced -temporally or not- with the accessibility problem to daily areas. Will we endure that this deficiency continues to deteriorate our daily lives?

This issue gives meaning to the commitment of Acces Universel, an association 1901, which finds its basis in the law of 11 February 2005 on equal opportunities.

We know that the path is difficult, but everything must be tried to educate the public, change and improve the living environment, so that accessibility become a path of freedom. So I invite you to join us to share and invent new solutions in every sphere of life.
It is primarily a question of willness, it must not be not only purposes.
Accessibility concerns all of us.

Give our children a living places in the world available for each of them.”

Roland Dreyfus
President of the Association Access Universel

 

Producing buildings today which save on materials and energy according to sustainable development principles is certainly a laudable objective, but we should not forget that the first objective of buildings is to be user-friendly for their visitors or dwellers. We should also view their accessibility, not as a constraint but as an essential quality in the use of places where we live!

In order to make buildings more accessible, we do not have to increase systematically costs and budgets. Simple solutions exist, such as a different texture for floor coverings in front of an elevator door, to enable sight-impaired persons to locate it more easily, or a layout system (calepinage, in French) with specific forms and colours for floor coverings, doors and walls to assist persons suffering from a mental or visual deficiency. We should stop believing that all solutions require the creation of specific highly priced product ranges: many solutions require only the intelligent adaptation of existing products. For instance, would it really be expensive to produce control panels with large buttons, clear displays and a reduced number of functions? I estimate that many fully capable and intelligent people would be pleased not to have to handle any longer control panels incorporating 40 different functions, many of whom difficult to grasp!

Everybody would benefit from these practical improvements. We should consider accessibility as a benchmark of the user-friendly level, and comfort in the use. Managers at transport and services’ companies have already worked to achieve better accessibility to their physical or virtual counters, and are experimenting with new designs for transit areas and waiting rooms. Real estate developers are beginning to think that accessibility is a Marketing Plus. Progress is significant; a lot more remains to be done. For instance, online service companies still often forget that their site is not very readable, that temporizations are too short for many users, over and above those experiencing difficulties with reading or writing. Let us continue to develop online product interfaces for sight- and hearing-impaired persons…

Better accessibility is useful for many people, not only for handicapped people using wheelchairs. Of course they need approach ramps, suitable door widths, elevators, and equipped bathrooms; mothers shopping with a child in a pushchair, persons who experience difficulties in moving around also have daily difficulties and needs, and present equipments rarely help and support them. Cycle tracks, bus lanes, and tramway tracks represent danger areas for sight-, hearing-impaired persons, and for all the elderly. I should also mention many glazed atria, with the glare they produce and the absence of location makers. They engender panic and total confusion in many people.

A broad development area is thus opening, for buildings and services; accessibility should be part of the earliest design stage of every project, irrespective of whether it concerns a building or services, a product or works. The user-friendly /quality level is taken into account by the following labels: «Universal design», «Design inclusif», «Liberté sans barrière», «Architecture pour tous», «Environnement adapté».

We do not have to produce ugly buildings to make them accessible. We do not have to impose warts on our historic sites; we do not have to transform our apartment blocks into yesterday’s hospitals. In fact, nowadays new hospital designs incorporate many user-friendly features. Ugliness is not obligatory.

A major objective would be to find a balance between adapted solutions, either permanent or adaptable, and pieces of furniture / elements specific to an individual dweller. I recommend that, except for basic elements such as size of the works, lighting…, we give priority to flexibility, with solutions easily taken apart, adaptable to changing needs, and easy to maintain. This last point is seldom taken into account, whereas a person facing difficulties in moving around finds it difficult to maintain her dwelling properly, notably to clean windows’ thresholds or ground siphons.

As of today we face many problems with only a few solutions. And often these solutions are known by only a few potential developers. The Universal Access association therefore organized a two-day symposium to bring together professionals from different areas, with their own views, practical experience and experiments.

Three major reasons explain our proposal for a symposium: