Disabled & Condos

[androiduk]

For those of you interested, there's been a debate going on in the Casa thread on this subject and casaguy suggested we move it over here. My position is that disabled people have access to all areas of a condominium building unless the cost of doing so is prohibitive. In that case, the disabled persons maintenance fees should be reduced. The same thinking could be applied to a business. If a movie theatre had a balcony but didn't have elevator access to it, then people in wheelchairs, etc. should get a reduced ticket price because they don't have access to the whole theatre. Please weigh in.

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

Can apartment rentals be a part of this discussion too? I can't count the number of disabled and seniors that have been my neighbours over the years who have to struggle to get in and out of their home and there appears to be no legislation at any government level which assures these folks fair access to their own home which I find shameful. Seniors and disabled have plenty of barriers as it is, getting in and out of their home should not be one of them.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Until the principles of universal design are commonplace - and legislated - we'll continue to put up buildings, and produce products for sale, that are of little use to many people. I think one of the main problems is psychological - the idea that design for people with special needs is a "niche" market, an add-on, and that their requirements can't be accommodated along with those of everyone else when buildings are built and systems are designed and consumer goods are produced. I'm optimistic that we'll reach a tipping-point in attitudes to change all of that before too much longer. We did with no-smoking campaigns, we did with same-sex benefits and marriage, we did with all kinds of public health issues such as immunization and universal access to health care, we did with the standardization of weights and measures, so there's no reason why we can't apply the same sensible approach to accepting the principles of universal design.

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

I hope so. Baby boomers are getting older too and mobility will be an issue for them in the next 10-20 years.

 

[androiduk]

Another point to consider is that improvements made for the benefit of the diisabled have a habit of spilling over and benefitting a larger part of the population. When I was pushing my 2 kids around in a double stroller I sure appreciated all those elevators and ramps, as do people on crutches who have temporarily injured themselves. And how about the announcement of every stop on the TTC. You can read a book, etc with less worry about missing your stop and they're very helpful when your in an unfamiliar neighbourhood.

 

[Hank]

I think the phrase is 'reasonable accomodation'. The goal should be to ensure that someone has a reasonable opportunity to enjoy more or less the same benefits as everyone else, regardless of disability.

Reasonable accomodation doesn't necessarily mean 'complete accomodation', though. As an example, the new bridges at the head of the slips on the waterfront aren't going to be wheelchair accessible, because to do so would likely be cost-prohibitive and result in a much larger (and longer) bridge to accomodate the reduced incline of the ramps. It's unfortunate that everyone won't be able to enjoy the bridges, but the mobility impaired will still be able to enjoy the rest of the waterfront, so it's fair to say that all parties have been reasonably accomodated in the final design.

Assuming that a movie theatre has a disabled seating area (offering a good view of the screen, not in some out-of-the-way crappy place), I don't think that it's reasonable to give a disabled theatre patron a discount on their ticket because they don't have access to the entire theatre. It's reasonable to expect that you will get a seat in a theatre, not that you will necessarily have your pick of any seat in the house. I agree that, to the maximum extent possible, public areas of a condo should be accessble to all residents, but it wouldn't be reasonable to expect a condo corporation to give condo fee discounts in a situation where this was done but there was still some area of the building that was not accessible to someone. What if I have a phobia of water? (a completely valid disability, mind you) Should I be given a discount because I can't use my condo's pool? What if I have guests over...can they use the pool? What if I rent my unit? Policing such a system would be impossible.

I agree that disabilities should be given the maximum consideration possible in design, but I don't agree with the idea of a condo fee discount for a Casa resident that can't access that little raised area of the lobby or a ticket discount for a disabled theatre-goer that can't sit in the balcony.

 

[Whoaccio]

I would generally shy away from trying to implement 'universal design' as a one sized fits all solution. Society will always have outliers of some sort that are to varying degrees impossible to accommodate. The recent case of obese people lobbying the airlines to receive extra seating room at no extra cost by virtue of their condition stands out. Applying 'universal design' ideals, the solution would be to mandate aircarriers provide seating to accommodate 200+kg people. It doesn't take a genius to figure out forcing the airlines to provide such seating regardless of demand would seriously hurt the industry's viability.

Another example that comes to mind is public transit. I've never actually crunched numbers, but I would be interested in comparing the costs of rendering the TTC fully wheelchair accessible (every bus, every tram, every subway station) to just providing all potential wheelchair bound customers with alternative transportation. On the first example, I suppose it depends on the nature of services which handicapped owners are being excluded from. I am not comfortable saying 'everything' should be made accessible as some things, by their nature, can't be made accessible. Tread mills are obviously inaccessible to many disabled, but I don't think disabled tenants are entitled to a refund due to it. I don't think theaters should be made to ensure every seat, including balconies, are accessible either, so long as they ensure a reasonable portion are. There is a point where ensuring everyone is served equally simply serves less and less people

 

[Urban Shocker]

It isn't "impossible" for airlines to adjust to demand, though - however clumsy or grudging they may appear: Air Canada now apparently requiring a doctor’s note from disabled or obese passengers seeking a second seat free of charge for a personal atendant, for instance. Besides, Business Class on Air Canada evolved a different design from "steerage" several years ago, so why not also incorporate larger seats for some passengers as the market changes? As for the TTC', WheelTrans allows an attendant to travel with an elderly or disabled person if they pay the usual fare, so accommodations can be made - people with special needs along with those of everyone else - when buildings are built and systems are designed and consumer goods are produced. Industrial designers have adjusted to the obesity epidemic and introduced new products as this article indicates:

http://faithsheridan.com/press/pdf/supersizearticlemarchaprilicon1.pdf

androiduk makes a good point about the benefits that reducing barriers for persons with disabilities has had on the rest of the population - automatic doors, ramps that also benefit people with kids in strollers, TTC stop announcements, buses that can lower their entrance level for passengers, etc. In reducing substandard services, and treating these as design challenges no different from any other, there are unexpected benefits for others.

Here's part of an article from I.D. about designers responding to the needs of the obese:

Big Business
by By Jessie ScanlonA Problem Too Big to Ignore

Tom Kelley's phone rings often. But when it rang one day last spring, the caller had an unusual request: Would he speak at an invitation-only conference called "Healthy Solutions: Industry Responses to the Obesity Epidemic"? He said no. As the COO of design consultancy IDEO, he was no expert on obesity-innovation was his business. When told he could talk more generally about human-centered design implications, though, Kelley acquiesced and found himself slated to speak on "The Silver Lining: Solutions to Obesity through Design." That was when he started researching and realized just how big the problem is.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 65 percent of American adults are overweight or obese (defined as having a body mass index of 25 or more; see p. 63), and the percentage of the population that can be classified as "morbidly obese" has tripled in the past decade. Roughly 300,000 deaths a year are associated with obesity, and scarier still, 50 percent of children born after 2000 will develop Type 2 diabetes.

"This is the biggest health issue in the country," Kelley says. "Now I look around and there's no aspect of the world that's not affected. Obesity isn't something designers often talk about, but this trend could cause a sea change."

In fact, the shift is already happening—companies (and the designers they hire) are eager to meet the new market demand. Consider this: In 1988, Nancy Summer and Bill Fabrey founded Amplestuff, a Bearsville, New York, company that makes and sells plus-size versions of everyday products and others invented specifically for the problems of larger people. When the overweight Summer complained that she needed help reaching certain parts of her body in the shower, for example, Fabrey, an engineer, came up with Sponge on a Stick. Amplestuff now sells close to 100 products ranging from 1,000-pound scales and extra-large umbrellas to airline seatbelt extenders and a little device to help you put your socks on without bending over.

You can't engineer a hospital gown, let alone a chair, without confronting the issue. And then there's the fast-growing market of medical tools—everything from diabetes paraphernalia to air masks for obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which the breathing pipe collapses during sleep. From consumer product development to specialized medical devices, from subway cars to tractors—obesity is one of the more important issues in design today.

America's new dimensions affect all designers, though in different ways, reflecting our culture's conflicted feelings about size. In general, America celebrates big as a constitutional right. Starbucks built its empire selling coffee in three sizes: big, bigger, and bigger still. Our appetite for SUVs and McMansions is cliche. And it's tempting to argue that the overstuffed chairs and bowl-sized mugs of Crate and Barrel, not to mention the blobbish forms of the Karim Rashid generation, struck a chord with consumers becoming overstuffed and blobbish themselves.

Unlike marketers, who tend to think in terms of the average consumer, designers need to think about the extremes—the potential users at the ends of the spectrum. Take ergonomic task chairs, for instance, which need to accommodate a 100-pound woman as well as a 300-pound man. To address that problem, Herman Miller decided to sell the Aeron chair in three sizes. "But that created headaches for corporate buyers trying to figure out how many of each size to get," says Niels Diffrient, designer of the Humanscale Freedom chair. "We took the road of developing a one-size chair that adapts to 90 percent of the population." Still, the designer is currently working on a new feature for the Freedom chair—armrests that will slide horizontally to give a sitter more room because, as he says, "It's an ongoing problem."

The fashion industry was the first to recognize the problem: Twenty years ago, companies convinced the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to abandon its standard of women's clothing sizes, and have since adopted a deflationary policy—increasing the actual size of its clothes so that a size-12 woman can still wear a size 8. Think of it as consumer codependency.

Of course, some people can't wear a size 8 even if it really is a size 12. Those consumers wear plus-size clothing brands like Forgotten Woman, and they vacation at Freedom Paradise—"the size-friendly vacation club"—and, ultimately, go six feet under in an oversize coffin from Indiana-based Goliath Casket. These consumers represent the growing niche of products and services designed specifically for the obese.

One company addressing that group is Brayton International, a Steelcase subsidiary focused on the contract health-care market. Last year, the High Point, North Carolina-based company launched a line of bariatric (a term for the medical treatment of obesity) furniture engineered to support 1,400 pounds of static load. With half a dozen competitors, including Nemschoff and Bari Chair, Brayton is far from a monopoly. But they have eight different models (and more in the pipeline) and plans to dominate the market with offerings ranging from the 35-inch Rave Open Arm to the 50.5-inch Club Grande.

Brayton worked closely with a customer, Pacific Laparoscopy, during development, basing the designs on extensive interviews and videotapes of obese patients trying to get in and out of chairs and beds. For a heavier person, basic activities can be challenging and potentially embarrassing. "The first thing a 375-pound person does is check how sturdy a chair is," says Brayton designer Rob Easter. "But they don't want it to look like it was made for fat people." So Brayton's bariatric seats resemble its standard line—the Progeny Bariatric chair, for example, looks exactly like the Progeny single seat chair. The legs are the same dimensions and the added cross rails, which would differentiate it from standard models, are hidden from view—though they are all a little higher to give sitters more leverage when standing up. (Those who need extra help can turn to Dynamic Living's Pride Lift Recovery Chair—a veritable Cadillac of generously sized seating that can hoist a 450-pound person into a standing position "gracefully and easily!")

In hospitals, the issue isn't just accommodating the heavyset, but ensuring that nurses and orderlies don't injure themselves trying to lift an obese patient. That's the idea behind New Care's Rehab products: the bed, which comes in widths of 39 inches by 86 inches (The Tall Plus) and 48 inches by 80 inches (The Wide Plus); the Big-Turn air mattress that helps roll the patient over; and even the Lift and Transfer 750 for hoisting patients into an extra-wide wheelchair.

"In creating products for the obese, there are the standard functional issues," says Aaron Oppenheimer, principal interaction designer at Design Continuum. "But there are also unique physiological and emotional issues." To illustrate the point, Oppenheimer describes the Accu-Check Compact glucose meter that his firm designed for Roche Diagnostics. Other meters require the user to insert a small strip of paper into the machine for every test—a challenge for late-stage diabetics who often have poor motor skills. Design Continuum engineered a novel mechanism: essentially a paper-tray that holds enough strips for 17 tests. Additionally, to make users feel less self-conscious about carrying the device around in public, the design team camouflaged the meter as a cell phone, complete with a clamshell form and belt clip.

"A person's disability is based on the environment. We'd all be disabled if we went to Mars, because that environment is designed for Martians," says Smart Design consultant Dan Formosa. "You could disable thousands just by printing The New York Times in four-point type. Designers control the environment that defines the disability." In other words, the more aware designers are of the day-to-day needs of supersize Americans, the less "disabling" obesity would be.

"I don't tend to think about the fact that we're designing something for heavier people," insists Jane Fulton Sury, a human factors expert at IDEO. "The brief is simply to design something, and to do that, you have to think about the people you're designing for."

 

[casaguy]

All excellent and thoughtful responses. But I'm waiting to hear some comments on what triggered this thread:

Why do you get preference because you're able bodied. If someone doesn't have access to the whole building then they should get a break on their maintenance fees. Why should they pay for the upkeep of the pool when they can't use it.

Although androiduk is well-meaning, I can't help but feeling that I, as an able bodied person should be expected to fork over more cash because of my good fortune.

I'd be curious to hear responses that defend androiduk's comment. Are there any?

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

I don't believe that anyone who is disabled should receive any reduction in maintenance fees. This would turn into such a contentious issue I can't see it ever being resolved to every parties satisfaction. Remember that being disabled can mean a lot of things, one could be confined to wheelchair due to a physical disability, blind, have psychiatric issues etc. I think the same applies if someone rents in a building with a pool, gym, sauna etc., do they get a reduction in rent because they are unable to use the facilities? No.

 

[Acero]

I don't believe that anyone who is disabled should receive any reduction in maintenance fees. This would turn into such a contentious issue I can't see it ever being resolved to every parties satisfaction. Remember that being disabled can mean a lot of things, one could be confined to wheelchair due to a physical disability, blind, have psychiatric issues etc. I think the same applies if someone rents in a building with a pool, gym, sauna etc., do they get a reduction in rent because they are unable to use the facilities? No.

I definitely agree with your statement. It is a common saying that we have to treat disabled people as equally as possible. So I guess condo fees is not an exemption but of course we also have to be sympathetic to their needs.