When people design public places, I wish…
(watch the video to find out)
If you’ve been following any of The Universal Design Project’s social media accounts (or this Medium publication) over the past few months, you’ve likely seen several 30–60min interviews with individuals telling their stories about why the design of homes and communities are important to them. We’re starting to compile the content to create a variety of small clips to help bring more awareness to the variety of functional issues experienced by everyday people in our communities.
There are many different health conditions, illnesses, injuries, and disabilities that impact people in the short term and in the long term. These aren’t always obvious. Lots of people (maybe including you) have experienced something in their lives that affects the way they participate in community.
Video
In this 8 minute video, you’ll hear from a handful of people who live in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia discuss what is important to them in the design of public spaces…
I hope this video helps you gain a sense that individuals with visible and invisible disabilities are wanting some of the same types of features within their communities. Those sharing their stories are also wanting more collaboration during the design process, and feel it’s necessary to put important features into a design from the start. They’d like to see this for better overall function, as well as part of the building code.
Universal design seems to get the most attention from people thinking about others who are aging or have physical disabilities. While that is a great start, there are so many other things to consider, and we want to bring awareness to the diversity of abilities in our communities.
I want to share a special thank you to all those who participated in these interviews and shared their stories to give us insight into just how important the design of our community is to all individuals for increasing independence and decreasing frustration.
Update
We’ve completed several themed videos (including the one above) as a part of an awareness campaign. Through nearly 25 interviews, we’ve pulled out common themes to create a handful of videos on different topics to help bring more awareness to the variety of functional issues experienced by everyday people. We hope this helps you see that people have all sorts of different life experiences, and if you want to design something that’s universally accessible, you need to see the wide range of people who should be able to use it. Click the link above to learn more about how to contribute to our awareness campaign as well.
