With accessibility in mind, our BA (Hons) Interior Design students have been learning firsthand the importance of designing comfort and access for all into their work. Working in pairs, the students were given either a wheelchair, to represent reduced physical mobility or glasses that mimicked visual impairment.
Following a specific route through the College and Woodhouse Lane – the busy parade of shops and eateries outside College, the students encountered a range of problems experienced by people with a disability. They realised how a simple step, a badly positioned disabled viewing area or a disproportioned disabled ramp can have a major affect to the quality of a person’s interaction with a building.
Lecturer Patrice Oliver, said: ‘We’ve run this exercise for the past ten years and over that time building regulations and disability discrimination laws have become stricter. This exercise gives our students empathy with the problems a disability can present. They can then feed this understanding into their designs.’