Inclusive Design: Enabling Spaces

The organised retail blitzkrieg across the country proclaiming India’s emerging economic vigour, has led to super malls mushrooming all over Ahmedabad and more are about to jump into the fray. Developers are swallowing large plots of land to convert them into staggering money-spinning enterprises—shopping complexes buzzing with multi-screen cinemas, recreational facilities, food courts and branded outlets. Our state governments are all too happy to foster the shopping mall boom and foreign direct investment is just on the threshold. The urban Indian consumer has also plunged headlong into a love of mall culture; honeymooning with this new way of home purchases that also double as family outings and entertainment. Everything is hunky dory under the shimmering glass canopy. We are a developing nation.

Predictably then, like other public utility buildings such as educational institutes, parks, hotels, cinema halls, housing complexes, banks, government offices and the railway and bus stations, these architectural edifices are woefully insensitive to the needs of those whose ability to move around is restricted-- the elderly, and persons with physical impairments.

People with locomotor impairments are significantly disadvantaged by the design of the typical retail stores and malls, and find that moving around in them can be a nightmare. To start with the floors, including highly polished, marble and terrazzo floors and those that have been treated with floor finishes are inherently, dangerously slippery. It takes tremendous effort to walk carefully on them. Wet weather conditions and poor housekeeping leading to wet floors worsen the situation. There are no seats, sofas, or chairs where they can sit or rest in the midst of their shopping which leads to discomfort, physical pain and exhaustion. For wheelchair users, malls are effectively off-limits because they are not always barrier free even if they do have lifts, ramps, and special toilets. Often, the ramps are excessively steep and special configuration steps, railings, lifts equipped with handle bars are conspicuously missing.

While the physical impairment itself may cause the difficulty in mobility, ableist environments which are not accommodating enough lead to dis-abling situations. The burden of disability must necessarily shift from the individual to society; we need to re-examine the built environment and technology. This is because when disability combines with restricting factors in the environment such as social attitudes, a lack of information and access to quality services it results in a situation of handicap. Handicaps perpetuate the exclusion of people with disabilities from mainstream society by violating their human right to a life of dignity and equal opportunity.

Surely, the mobility of people through such public spaces can be made less stressful in a way that includes the needs of all ages and abilities. This is where Inclusive Design comes in: it is a way of designing policies, services, products and environments in a sustainable manner so that they are usable and appeal to everyone regardless of age, and ability by working with users to remove barriers in the social, technical, political and economic processes underpinning building and design. Doing so, will help build a more integrated and inclusive society that can truly carry us into a new India.