Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability

摘要

'Who counts as everyone and how can we know?' is the ambitious question that author Aimi Hamraie explores in their original and penetrating book Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability, which traces the evolution of Universal Design, a late-twentieth-century design philosophy developed by a group of designers and rehabilitation specialists led by disabled architect Ronald Mace, as a more flexible alternative to the disabled access code (p. 5). The book opens with a micro-travel log from four sites that employ various interpretations of Universal Design: the Blusson Spinal Cord Centre in Vancouver, with a ceremonial ramp winding around an oblong atrium; the Institute for Human Centered Design in Boston, replete with broadly accessible architecture and consumer items; Morgan's Wonderland, a theme park in Austin, where children with disabilities were integral to the design of rides and spaces; and an annual Society of Disability Studies conference lecture, featuring American Sign Language and simultaneous transcription. As the author observes, 'each space embodies a very different way of understanding the concept of disability, whether a medical category in need of correction, a category of identity and shared experience, a consumer designation, or an invaluable aspect of human community, which society should anticipate and value' (xiii). How understandings of 'universal' reproduce the subject of design is the analytical thread of this book. The author argues that the term is slippery, problematic, and historically produced-entangled with some of the same ideologies that shape(d) oppressive ways of regulating the disabled.