PGDipTHE

There is some published work on the education of Universal Design, Accessibility and Mobility topics and it is not the intention to examine these topics. But, in order to effect change - to promote the development of a truly non-handicapping built environment for the widest spectrum of users, there is a pressing need to heighten awareness. This is not necessarily the same definition (or use of the term) "awareness" as employed in educational circles and treaties.

Raised awareness leads to a greater involvement with issues, and from this follows solutions and improvements. Without the awareness of (or low threshold of awareness of) a problem - there is little impetus to tackle the problem. For example - if there are perceived to be very few wheelchair users then there is a lower priority given to them in providing an environment for them; in effect there is a "chicken and egg" situation - perceived few users so little need to provide for them / little provision for users and hence little use!

"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n
What matter where, if I be still the same,"
John Milton, Paradise Lost.

So the challenge is to examine how awareness can be raised, attitudes changed, and the whole educational machine kick-started to involve students, educators and those in a position to modify the built environment in a real, social and human topic area.

"The American Institute of Architects has had as its mission statement "the increase of public awareness to good design"." (Pressman, 1997).

Some numerical examples illustrate that the minorities of persons with a disability, although small in percentage terms, are significant in number : -

● In the U.K. there are over a million blindlpartially sighted people, many of these are elderly.

● By 2030, one in every four Singaporeans will be aged 60 and above. Projections by the United nations see the number of people 60 years and older increasing from the present 550 million to 1.2 billion in 2025 (The Straits Times, 1998).

● In Western Australia in 1993 a report (Alessandri, Leonard & Bower, 1996) grouped disability into five main categories : physical (69%), sensory (I5%), psychiatric (8%), intellectual (3%), acquired brain injury and stroke (2%). The report finds that 305,000 Western Australians have a disability (18% of the population), within 25 years the number with disabilities is set to almost double to more than half a million, almost 3 in 4 people with disabilities live in metropolitan areas and the most common types of disabilities are physical (about 13% of the Western Australian population).

Minority users of the built environment can be categorised as :

● Persons with physical disabilities
● Persons with sensory disabilities
● Persons with multiple disabilities
● Elderly citizens

(The range of disabilities and population characteristics are further explained in Appendix D.)