Accessible America

Accessible America PDF Author: Bess Williamson
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479802492
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
A history of design that is often overlooked—until we need it Have you ever hit the big blue button to activate automatic doors? Have you ever used an ergonomic kitchen tool? Have you ever used curb cuts to roll a stroller across an intersection? If you have, then you’ve benefited from accessible design—design for people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities. These ubiquitous touchstones of modern life were once anything but. Disability advocates fought tirelessly to ensure that the needs of people with disabilities became a standard part of public design thinking. That fight took many forms worldwide, but in the United States it became a civil rights issue; activists used design to make an argument about the place of people with disabilities in public life. In the aftermath of World War II, with injured veterans returning home and the polio epidemic reaching the Oval Office, the needs of people with disabilities came forcibly into the public eye as they never had before. The US became the first country to enact federal accessibility laws, beginning with the Architectural Barriers Act in 1968 and continuing through the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, bringing about a wholesale rethinking of our built environment. This progression wasn’t straightforward or easy. Early legislation and design efforts were often haphazard or poorly implemented, with decidedly mixed results. Political resistance to accommodating the needs of people with disabilities was strong; so, too, was resistance among architectural and industrial designers, for whom accessible design wasn’t “real” design. Bess Williamson provides an extraordinary look at everyday design, marrying accessibility with aesthetic, to provide an insight into a world in which we are all active participants, but often passive onlookers. Richly detailed, with stories of politics and innovation, Williamson’s Accessible America takes us through this important history, showing how American ideas of individualism and rights came to shape the material world, often with unexpected consequences.

Accessible America

Accessible America PDF Author: Bess Williamson
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479802492
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
A history of design that is often overlooked—until we need it Have you ever hit the big blue button to activate automatic doors? Have you ever used an ergonomic kitchen tool? Have you ever used curb cuts to roll a stroller across an intersection? If you have, then you’ve benefited from accessible design—design for people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities. These ubiquitous touchstones of modern life were once anything but. Disability advocates fought tirelessly to ensure that the needs of people with disabilities became a standard part of public design thinking. That fight took many forms worldwide, but in the United States it became a civil rights issue; activists used design to make an argument about the place of people with disabilities in public life. In the aftermath of World War II, with injured veterans returning home and the polio epidemic reaching the Oval Office, the needs of people with disabilities came forcibly into the public eye as they never had before. The US became the first country to enact federal accessibility laws, beginning with the Architectural Barriers Act in 1968 and continuing through the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, bringing about a wholesale rethinking of our built environment. This progression wasn’t straightforward or easy. Early legislation and design efforts were often haphazard or poorly implemented, with decidedly mixed results. Political resistance to accommodating the needs of people with disabilities was strong; so, too, was resistance among architectural and industrial designers, for whom accessible design wasn’t “real” design. Bess Williamson provides an extraordinary look at everyday design, marrying accessibility with aesthetic, to provide an insight into a world in which we are all active participants, but often passive onlookers. Richly detailed, with stories of politics and innovation, Williamson’s Accessible America takes us through this important history, showing how American ideas of individualism and rights came to shape the material world, often with unexpected consequences.

Making Disability Modern

Making Disability Modern PDF Author: Bess Williamson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350070440
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
Making Disability Modern: Design Histories brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplinary and national perspectives to examine how designed objects and spaces contributes to the meanings of ability and disability from the late 18th century to the present day, and in homes, offices, and schools to realms of national and international politics. The contributors reveal the social role of objects - particularly those designed for use by people with disabilities, such as walking sticks, wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs - and consider the active role that makers, users and designers take to reshape the material environment into a usable world. But it also aims to make clear that definitions of disability-and ability-are often shaped by design.

Accessible Vacations

Accessible Vacations PDF Author: Simon J. Hayhoe
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538128683
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
Take a tour of ten national parks in this overview of the ways in which they can be accessed by those with physical, sensory and learning limitations and their companions. The National Parks of the U.S. are some of the most sought-after travel destinations in the world. But a visit to any one of them may seem daunting to someone with hearing, seeing, or other physical challenges. What many may not know is that the National Parks offer help to those with access needs. Here, Simon Hayhoe takes readers on a tour of ten National Parks and the accessibility options available to visitors and their companions. He covers three regions of national parks in the east, center and west of the US. The eastern parks include Acadia National Park in Maine, the Everglades National Park in Florida and the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania. The central parks include Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, Yellowstone National Park, which is mostly in Wyoming and Zion National Park in Utah. The western parks include Denali National Park in Alaska, Olympic National Park in Washington State and Yosemite National Park in California. Knowing how and where to tap into access points is the first step on your journey. So come along, and let this work guide you.

The Future of Disability in America

The Future of Disability in America PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309104726
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 619

Get Book Here

Book Description
The future of disability in America will depend on how well the U.S. prepares for and manages the demographic, fiscal, and technological developments that will unfold during the next two to three decades. Building upon two prior studies from the Institute of Medicine (the 1991 Institute of Medicine's report Disability in America and the 1997 report Enabling America), The Future of Disability in America examines both progress and concerns about continuing barriers that limit the independence, productivity, and participation in community life of people with disabilities. This book offers a comprehensive look at a wide range of issues, including the prevalence of disability across the lifespan; disability trends the role of assistive technology; barriers posed by health care and other facilities with inaccessible buildings, equipment, and information formats; the needs of young people moving from pediatric to adult health care and of adults experiencing premature aging and secondary health problems; selected issues in health care financing (e.g., risk adjusting payments to health plans, coverage of assistive technology); and the organizing and financing of disability-related research. The Future of Disability in America is an assessment of both principles and scientific evidence for disability policies and services. This book's recommendations propose steps to eliminate barriers and strengthen the evidence base for future public and private actions to reduce the impact of disability on individuals, families, and society.

What Can a Body Do?

What Can a Body Do? PDF Author: Sara Hendren
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 073522000X
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and LitHub Winner of the 2021 Science in Society Journalism Book Prize A fascinating and provocative new way of looking at the things we use and the spaces we inhabit, and a call to imagine a better-designed world for us all. Furniture and tools, kitchens and campuses and city streets—nearly everything human beings make and use is assistive technology, meant to bridge the gap between body and world. Yet unless, or until, a misfit between our own body and the world is acute enough to be understood as disability, we may never stop to consider—or reconsider—the hidden assumptions on which our everyday environment is built. In a series of vivid stories drawn from the lived experience of disability and the ideas and innovations that have emerged from it—from cyborg arms to customizable cardboard chairs to deaf architecture—Sara Hendren invites us to rethink the things and settings we live with. What might assistance based on the body’s stunning capacity for adaptation—rather than a rigid insistence on “normalcy”—look like? Can we foster interdependent, not just independent, living? How do we creatively engineer public spaces that allow us all to navigate our common terrain? By rendering familiar objects and environments newly strange and wondrous, What Can a Body Do? helps us imagine a future that will better meet the extraordinary range of our collective needs and desires.

Accessible Home Design

Accessible Home Design PDF Author: Thomas David Davies
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780929819181
Category : Barrier-free design
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Paralyzed Veterans of America has revised and expanded the first edition of Accessible Home Design. Color photographs illustrate attractive and innovative accessibility projects. Graphics from the previous edition have been revised for better clarity and supplemented by new color drawings. The book's scope has been expanded to address not only a home's interior and exterior spaces but also many of the more detailed elements. In additon, advice for planning a design, construction contracting and oversight, building permits, and project financing have all been updated to meet today's standard.

22 Accessible Road Trips

22 Accessible Road Trips PDF Author: Candy Harrington
Publisher: Demos Medical Publishing
ISBN: 1936303264
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
Contains 22 different, flexible road trips of two to three weeks throughout the United States with information on accessible lodging, sites, trails, restaurants and other attractions both on and off the beaten path.

Accessible Technology and the Developing World

Accessible Technology and the Developing World PDF Author: Michael Ashley Stein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019258541X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
When digital content and technologies are designed in a way that is inaccessible for persons with disabilities, they are locked out of commerce, education, employment, and access to government information. In developing areas of the world, as new technical infrastructures are being built, it is especially important to ensure that accessibility is a key design goal. Unfortunately, nearly all research on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) accessibility and innovation for persons with disabilities-whether from the legal, technical, or development fields-has focused on developed countries, with very little being written about developing world initiatives. Accessible Technology and the Developing World aims to change this, by bringing increased attention to ICT accessibility in developing areas. This book brings together a unique combination of contributors with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including authors from well-known non-governmental organizations, significant United Nations entities, and universities in both the developing and developed world. Together, they present a unique and much needed review of this critical and growing area of work, and primarily address three core themes - the lack of attention given to innovations taking place in the developing world, the need to ensure that infrastructures in the Global South do not present barriers to people with disabilities, and the need to exercise caution when applying techniques from the Global North to the Global South that won't transfer effectively. This book will be of use to researchers in the fields of civil rights, development studies, disability rights, disability studies, human-computer interaction and accessibility, human rights, international law, political science, and universal design.

2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design

2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design PDF Author: Department Justice
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781500783945
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
(a) Design and construction. (1) Each facility or part of a facility constructed by, on behalf of, or for the use of a public entity shall be designed and constructed in such manner that the facility or part of the facility is readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities, if the construction was commenced after January 26, 1992. (2) Exception for structural impracticability. (i) Full compliance with the requirements of this section is not required where a public entity can demonstrate that it is structurally impracticable to meet the requirements. Full compliance will be considered structurally impracticable only in those rare circumstances when the unique characteristics of terrain prevent the incorporation of accessibility features. (ii) If full compliance with this section would be structurally impracticable, compliance with this section is required to the extent that it is not structurally impracticable. In that case, any portion of the facility that can be made accessible shall be made accessible to the extent that it is not structurally impracticable. (iii) If providing accessibility in conformance with this section to individuals with certain disabilities (e.g., those who use wheelchairs) would be structurally impracticable, accessibility shall nonetheless be ensured to persons with other types of disabilities, (e.g., those who use crutches or who have sight, hearing, or mental impairments) in accordance with this section.

Access to Health Care in America

Access to Health Care in America PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309047420
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Americans are accustomed to anecdotal evidence of the health care crisis. Yet, personal or local stories do not provide a comprehensive nationwide picture of our access to health care. Now, this book offers the long-awaited health equivalent of national economic indicators. This useful volume defines a set of national objectives and identifies indicatorsâ€"measures of utilization and outcomeâ€"that can "sense" when and where problems occur in accessing specific health care services. Using the indicators, the committee presents significant conclusions about the situation today, examining the relationships between access to care and factors such as income, race, ethnic origin, and location. The committee offers recommendations to federal, state, and local agencies for improving data collection and monitoring. This highly readable and well-organized volume will be essential for policymakers, public health officials, insurance companies, hospitals, physicians and nurses, and interested individuals.