You can watch the twenty-seventh Parlour LAB here!

This seminar is a discussion about disability as a creative generator, with Illiana Ginnis and Coral Gillett, Matthew McShane and Camila Shirota of the Hopkins Centre.

Illiana spoke about her soon-to-be-published doctoral research on architecture for people with intellectual disability who are non-verbal communicators. She warned of being aware of proxies and people who speak on others behalf, and recommended engaging specialist access consultants to help navigate processes of engagement. She told us some fantastic stories of the large difference that small changes in the built environment can make for people.

Coral, Matt, and Camilla spoke about the limits to AS1428 and how it does not cater to everyone. They’re using motion capture technologies to develop a tool to evaluate designs to ensure - before they’re built - that they actually work for people with disability.

Key takeaways?

An inclusive built environment is not just for an individual with disability, it’s for everyone - friends, family, visitors, elderly, people with injuries …
Embed people with lived experience in your project team
You can never anticipate what insights people with disability might have so they need to be included at every step of the process
Process is just as important as outcome, and approach depends on scale and type of project
Do not overburden people with disability by asking them to participate in engagement for free
Embrace your ignorance