Ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is one way in which in­clu­sion can be prac­tised.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, trans­form­ing our ex­ist­ing build­ings and cre­at­ing new in­te­ri­or and ex­te­ri­or spaces that fa­cil­i­tate peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties of­ten seems to be an af­ter­thought and not on the list of pri­or­i­ties. In the 2011 Trinidad and To­ba­go Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus it was re­port­ed that there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 52,244 per­sons in our coun­try liv­ing with a dis­abil­i­ty. That is a min­i­mum of 2.7 per cent of the to­tal pop­u­la­tion of 1.39 mil­lion. Giv­en these fig­ures which over the past nine years may be even greater shows that there is a need to pro­vide ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty for a grow­ing num­ber of per­sons who are mar­gin­alised due to lack of ac­cess. Pro­vid­ing tru­ly in­clu­sive de­sign for all is some­thing we do not con­sid­er in its en­tire­ty. The re­al­i­ty is that holis­tic plan­ning has on­ly re­cent­ly been pushed to the fore­front af­ter years of ad­vo­ca­cy and lob­by­ing by spe­cial in­ter­est groups, Ngo’s and self-ad­vo­cates glob­al­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to Ar­ti­cle 1 of the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties that Trinidad and To­ba­go rat­i­fied in 2015, each coun­try should strive “to pro­mote, pro­tect and en­able the full and equal en­joy­ment of all hu­man rights and fun­da­men­tal free­doms by all per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, and to pro­mote re­spect for their in­her­ent dig­ni­ty.” This re­spon­si­bil­i­ty does not fall on the gov­ern­ment alone. Pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor al­so have a part to play in en­sur­ing that per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties ex­pe­ri­ence a tru­ly in­clu­sive en­vi­ron­ment wher­ev­er they go in T&T. One way to over­come this in­ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is to em­brace the con­cept of uni­ver­sal de­sign. The Dis­abil­i­ty Act 2005 de­fines uni­ver­sal de­sign as “The de­sign and com­po­si­tion of an en­vi­ron­ment so that it may be ac­cessed, un­der­stood and used to the great­est pos­si­ble ex­tent, in the most in­de­pen­dent and nat­ur­al man­ner pos­si­ble, in the widest pos­si­ble range of sit­u­a­tions and with­out the need for adap­ta­tion, mod­i­fi­ca­tion, as­sis­tive de­vices or spe­cialised so­lu­tions. It must al­so be able to give ac­cess to per­sons of any age or size, hav­ing any phys­i­cal, sen­so­ry, men­tal health or in­tel­lec­tu­al abil­i­ty or dis­abil­i­ty”.

Uni­ver­sal de­sign is not a new con­cept it was de­vel­oped in the mid-1980s to help re­alise the goal of cre­at­ing a tru­ly in­clu­sive so­ci­ety. Ac­cord­ing to the late ar­chi­tect who coined the term, Ronald L Mace, uni­ver­sal de­sign is, “the de­sign of prod­ucts and en­vi­ron­ments to be us­able by all peo­ple, to the great­est ex­tent pos­si­ble, with­out the need for adap­ta­tion or spe­cialised de­sign.” Truth be told, when one re­al­ly delves in­to the con­cept of uni­ver­sal de­sign, you would soon re­alise the full scope of in­clu­sion that you need to make in or­der to ul­ti­mate­ly pro­vide the stan­dard of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty that ben­e­fits prac­ti­cal­ly any one who would en­ter and op­er­ate in an in­te­ri­or space. A few ar­chi­tec­tur­al el­e­ments that mea­sure up to the de­f­i­n­i­tion of uni­ver­sal de­sign are lever han­dles for open­ing doors, as op­posed to twist­ing knobs, smooth en­trance­ways on ground lev­el that do not in­clude stair­ways and wide door­ways and hall­ways.

With uni­ver­sal de­sign, all per­sons who utilise any form of de­sign or en­vi­ron­ment would stand to gain from its ex­po­sure, whether they be, “a per­son who has no sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems but who would ap­pre­ci­ate a well-de­signed ac­ces­si­ble and us­able prod­uct, ser­vice or en­vi­ron­ment… a per­son who is un­able to use the prod­uct at all,” or any­one ly­ing in be­tween that spec­trum. This is due to the fact that, ac­cord­ing to the CEUD, “the hu­man-cen­tred ap­proach to de­sign that uni­ver­sal de­sign sup­ports is user-friend­ly and con­ve­nient, but is al­so re­spect­ful of user dig­ni­ty, rights and pri­va­cy.”

On a so­ci­etal lev­el, uni­ver­sal de­sign can en­act greater equal­i­ty as well as make life more con­ve­nient and safer for every­one in var­i­ous types of en­vi­ron­ments. To achieve this, sys­tems and built in­fra­struc­ture must have users at the cen­tre of the de­sign process so that they can ac­com­mo­date all peo­ple from dif­fer­ent walks of life in so­ci­ety, be it abil­i­ties, ages and/or sizes. This ap­proach can be ap­plied to a key area, tech­nol­o­gy, as it has grown to be tru­ly pre­dom­i­nant in our phys­i­cal spaces and prod­ucts over time so that, ac­cord­ing to the CEUD, “the lines of what is specif­i­cal­ly prod­uct, In­for­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) or build­ing de­sign have be­come blurred.” Ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and in­clu­sion to a host of re­sources and ameni­ties (so­cial, fis­cal, and gov­ern­ment) can on­ly be fa­cil­i­tat­ed through uni­ver­sal de­sign that cre­ates true equal­i­ty.

In busi­ness, uni­ver­sal de­sign brings sev­er­al ad­van­tages. Larg­er mar­ket reach via the na­ture of any de­sign be­ing uni­ver­sal­ly ac­ces­si­ble and us­able to a greater cross sec­tion of peo­ple. This cre­ates more po­ten­tial cus­tomers for busi­ness­es. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there can be high­er cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion with the de­sign, en­vi­ron­ment or prod­uct and can lead to rec­om­men­da­tions and re­ten­tion of cus­tomers. Last­ly, busi­ness­es stand to ben­e­fit from hav­ing a good pub­lic im­age in so­ci­ety and a high rate of cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty due to their de­ci­sion to in­clude uni­ver­sal de­sign in their build­ing(s), re­sources or oth­er de­signs.

Our na­tion­al pol­i­cy on Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties elab­o­rates on sev­er­al pol­i­cy di­rec­tives that to­geth­er pro­vide a thor­ough frame­work for bring­ing about so­cial in­clu­sion among oth­er im­prove­ments to the lives of all per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties in our Re­pub­lic. Ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is one of the many ar­eas ad­dressed in the pol­i­cy that was made to ul­ti­mate­ly im­pact every as­pect of the lives of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. As­sis­tive tech­nol­o­gy and de­vices are one way they can be con­nect­ed to re­sources, ameni­ties and ser­vices they need for in­de­pen­dent life.

Should there be leg­is­la­tion in the fu­ture to con­cre­tise the safe­guard­ing of in­clu­sion for all in phys­i­cal spaces, uni­ver­sal de­sign would be the one of many use­ful ap­proach­es to ac­tu­al­is­ing ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty by all in so­ci­ety, no­tably with peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. Uni­ver­sal de­sign is in oth­er words about help­ing to achieve an in­clu­sive so­ci­ety where every­one has equal op­por­tu­ni­ties to par­tic­i­pate, whether they are young, old, dis­abled or able-bod­ied.