ABSTRACT
Chapter 6: Plans to Intervene: A Critical Access Approach calls for a shift, to advance ways of designing for people with disabilities through a co-constitutive critical access approach. This approach repositions how disability is constructed and produced when designing for access. The focus on problem-solving, checklists and guidelines in creating access is often devoid of the lived experience and embodied know-how of those with disabilities. What is required is a better understanding of the role of spatial design in the production of ability/disability and that the everyday expertise of people with disabilities be recognised as the knowledge that goes beyond generalising the experience of disability. This chapter presents case study research undertaken in Canada and Australia with key results prompting interior designers, architects and access consultants to engage with designing for access differently, through an innovative co-creation called (dis)audits. The two projects described in this chapter exemplify the designing of inclusive environments and include a design intervention at a university campus in Canada and the use of design technologies for understanding access differently in an art museum in Australia. The results affirm that access can be reimagined through embodiment and criticality by (de)constructing disability in design using a co-constitutive critical access approach and repositions designing for access away from codes, checklists, models and guidelines towards a multisensorial and co-constitutive approach for post-occupancy evaluations. This chapter explores how disability can be understood differently in architecture and spatial design through a critical access approach. The aim of this chapter is to provide a base for future empirical studies employing a critical access approach in diverse physical settings with the goal of orienting practitioners in the design of spaces to understand access differently.
