Centering Equity in the Inclusive Design of Housing: Co-Designing with People Living with Disabilities
An exciting new participatory action research project has begun at the University of Alberta. Funded by the Alberta Real Estate Foundation and coordinated through the Affordable Housing Solutions Lab, the Equity and Inclusion in Housing Design (EIHD) project will involve people living with disabilities, industry partners and University of Alberta researchers in the co-development of an equity-centered design process that can be used in the creation of inclusive housing that meets the needs of all Albertans, and ultimately, all Canadians.
The project is led by a research team consisting of community members living with disabilities (Mark Iantkow and Zachary Weeks), an inclusive design expert (Lara Pinchbeck), Community Housing Canada Project Coordinator Bon Swanson, and Dr. Joshua Evans, a Human Geographer at the University of Alberta and research lead at the Affordable Housing Solutions Lab. The Project Research Team is being supported by a Research Advisory Group consisting of industry and community partners including representatives from the Alberta Real Estate Foundation, RPK Architects, Red Plaid Developments and Voices of Albertans with Disabilities.
Over the next six months, our research team and advisory group will be implementing a series of activities with the aim of generating the resources and the tools needed to enhance the way we design housing in Alberta.
Before describing next steps in our research process, the following sections introduce the background understanding and the core concepts underpinning our project.
Housing and the Experience of Disability
Disability is an experience that affects everyone, to varying degrees, across the life course. Disability is often associated with individual conditions that limit a person’s everyday activities; however, the Social Model of Disability invites us to consider the powerful role of barriers in the physical, social and cultural environment that prevent people with these conditions from accessing spaces or participating in activities.
According to the 2017 Canadian Survey on Disability, roughly 1 in 5 (22%) Canadians aged 15 years and older experience one or more disabilities (Morris et al. 2018). More recently, the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability reported an increase in the incidence of disability, finding that 27% of Canadians (roughly eight million people) had one or more disabilities that limited them in their daily activities (Statistics Canada 2024). In Alberta, the incidence of disability increased 5.8% between 2017 and 2021 (to 27.5%). Given that disability is more prevalent among older adults, this population is expected to grow as Canada’s population ages. For these populations, barriers in built environments can inhibit participation in important activities such as employment, education, and social interaction. This is detrimental in terms of income, social inclusion, and overall wellbeing (Goodwin et al. 2022).
From the perspective of the Social Model of Disability, housing is an environment where physical barriers can limit access to adequate housing for people living with disabilities. Because housing is a basic necessity, it is widely considered a key determinant of health and wellbeing, and is internationally recognized as a basic human right. Yet, survey after survey shows that many Canadians living with disabilities reside in dwellings that do not meet their needs. According to the 2021 census, nearly 9% of Canadian households living in Core Housing Need have a member with a physical activity limitation (UBC 2023). These statistics reveal the chronic undersupply of barrier-free and accessible housing in Canada.
This is not a new problem. Barriers in the Canadian housing system have been well documented for decades. In 2017, the National Housing Strategy (NHS) identified disabled people as one of 12 priority ‘vulnerable groups’ experiencing housing precarity in Canada. Yet, despite continued housing production, the exclusion of people living with disabilities from adequate housing has persisted. This problem can be traced to the pervasiveness of ableism within society at large (Burns 2004; Imrie 2003; Imrie 2004; Imrie and Hall 2001). While building code requirements are intended to promote accessibility in the built environment, the planning, design, and construction of housing has been, and continues to be, largely organized around able-bodied norms. Moreover, people living with disability are too often excluded from these key steps in the production process, even in instances where they are the intended end-users (Burns 2004). As a result, the resulting housing does not meet their needs, and the problem perpetuates itself.
This condition reflects what Zeeman et al. (2016a, 762) call the inclusion paradox: “people who have the most to gain (i.e., people with complex disabilities) from new housing developments have the least opportunity to contribute to finding solutions, and those who have the most to contribute to new solutions (i.e., the private construction and housing sector) are usually the least engaged to do so.” This project aims to change that, by prototyping a process that allows people living with disability to participate in equitable and meaningful conversations about their housing needs with stakeholders in the housing industry, such as architects, planners, developers, builders, and realtors. In doing so, the project will synthesize knowledge from previous research on inclusive design (Zeeman et al. 2016a; Zeeman et al. 2016b; Lakhani et al. 2019) and develop new tools that can support the policy and planning needed to ensure that future multi-family rental housing is inclusive and accessible for all Canadians.
In addition to the social model of disability described above, this project is organized around a number of key design concepts as they relate to housing; namely, barrier-free design, inclusive design, co-design and equity. These concepts are described below.
What is barrier-free design?
The access needs of people living with disabilities is acknowledged within legislation (i.e. Accessible Canada Act), product standards and building regulations that apply to built environments. Most notable, with regard to housing, is the National Building Code along with accompanying provincial building codes, such as the Alberta Building Code. Building codes play a central role in establishing a baseline for the accessibility of built environments.
National and provincial building codes are deeply rooted in the barrier-free design paradigm, a prescriptive approach that defines specific access requirements. Barrier-free design is generally understood to be the minimum criteria for ensuring that built environments are accessible to people living with disabilities. The emphasis of barrier-free design is the elimination of physical barriers that would prevent people with disabilities from entering or moving throughout the interior of a built environment. Examples of barrier free design include curb ramps, accessible parking stalls, ramps leading to entrance ways, and barrier-free doorways, corridors, washrooms and elevators within buildings.
In Alberta, the requirements for barrier-free design are defined in Section 3.8 of the Alberta Building Code. Additionally, the City of Edmonton (2021, p. 115) incorporates barrier-free design into its development regulations and design guidelines where it defines “barrier-free” as the “absence of obstacles, allowing persons with physical, cognitive or sensory impairments safer or easier access to pathways, open spaces, amenities, facilities, services or activities.”
Building codes do establish a minimum level of accessibility in built environments; nonetheless, many people living with disability still experience exclusions. These exclusions can spring from the way in which barrier-free designs, such as separate entrances with ramps or designated washrooms, do not guarantee that all aspects of the built environment are accessible. Moreover, barrier-free designs can contribute to the separation of people with disabilities and in so doing reinforce differences between the able-bodied and the disabled. As a result, people living with disabilities have long expressed the desire for built environments that exceed these minimum requirements and which allow for equal enjoyment of built environments.
What is inclusive design?
This desire for built environments that are equally accessible to all people has led to the development of alternative design paradigms. One of the most well-known paradigms is known as universal design. First coined by Ronald Mace in the 1970s, universal design is a set of seven principles that can be applied to the design process. These principles are: equitable use, flexibility in use, simple and intuitive use, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical effort, size and space for approach and use. The working idea is that when a design process follows these principles, the more likely it is that the built environment will be one that can be accessed on equal terms by the greatest number of people possible.
More recently, the general ethos of universal design has been incorporated into and elaborated upon giving rise to what many are now calling the inclusive design paradigm. Inclusive design shares the universal principle that built environments should be designed in such a way that they can be accessed and used by as many people as possible, regardless of age, gender and disability. However, inclusive design approaches go further to emphasize the inclusion of end users in the design process, the diversity of end users and, by extension, the need to be flexible and offer choice.
The inclusive design approach was articulated by the UK Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment who, in a similar fashion to proponents of universal design, developed five principles of inclusive design. These principles are:
- Inclusive design places people at the heart of the design process;
- Inclusive design acknowledges diversity and difference;
- Inclusive design offers choice where a single design solution cannot accommodate all users;
- Inclusive design provides for flexibility in use;
- Inclusive design provides buildings and environments that are convenient and enjoyable to use for everyone.
Inclusive design, therefore, takes up concerns that go beyond physical access and seeks to produce built environments that confer dignity upon all users with a wide range of abilities and backgrounds. In this regard, the inclusive design paradigm expresses a strong commitment to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.
To varying degrees, inclusive design has been taken up by local planners and designers. For example, the City of Edmonton’s Design Access Guide states that:
“It is essential that residential suites, including single and multi family homes, are livable for all people, regardless of their mobility. Inclusive design allows people to move around and live without any restrictions within their space. A universal home shall be flexible enough to accommodate people with all types of abilities, and provide a diverse comfort level for any of its occupants and visitors. Home design should consider providing future flexibility to accommodate all abilities with minimum changes.”
As noted above, the realization of these universal homes is contingent upon putting people at the heart of the design process and embracing everyone on equal terms while also acknowledging diversity and differences. However, how this can be done in practice is not exactly straightforward. As mentioned earlier, one of the perennial challenges in design processes involving people living with disabilities is the inclusion paradox: disabled people have the most to gain in planning processes but they are oftentimes the least engaged to participate and contribute. This challenge has been the focus of much recent activity. One important development emerging from this activity is the turn toward co-design processes.
What is co-design?
Co-design refers to user-centered design processes that bring together diverse groups of people with a range of skills and experiences to positively transform environments, systems and human experiences. Proponents of co-design have used a wide range of terms to describe this activity including co-production, human-centered design, and participatory research. In the field of housing, a core component of co-design processes is the intentional effort to balance power asymmetries between architects, designers, builders, and end-users so that everyone can equally participate in decision-making and knowledge-creation in meaningful and impactful ways. This involves being reflective of worldviews and assumptions held by team members and being sensitive to the needs of end-users and ensuring space is made for inclusive participation.
Co-design processes have been used in many different sectors including within the disability sector where the rights of people living with disability include the right to be actively involved in decision-making processes concerning issues relating to their lives. In this regard, an important point that is oftentimes made is that co-design is NOT consultation. Consultation involves consideration of the views of people living with disabilities in decision making processes but decisions are ultimately made by others. Co-design, on the other hand, is “a process whereby relevant stakeholder views contribute not only to the thinking but also the making of decisions.”
Why is equity important in the co-design process?
A fundamental consideration when using co-design in processes involving people living with disabilities is that processes must be sensitive to power differentials and include a safe and inclusive space for collaboration. This involves careful consideration of the intersectionality of participants: the fact that everyone brings unique ethnic, racial, gender and socio-economic backgrounds to these processes which can position them differently with respect to the problem at hand. In this regard, equity-centered approaches to co-design are essential. Equity concerns ensuring that everyone has access to the resources they need to participate meaningfully and effectively in the design process. Without considering equity, co-design processes can exclude many groups that are historically oppressed and marginalized. Equity is absolutely fundamental to achieving the first principle of inclusive design: placing people at the heart of the design process.
Next Steps in the EIHD Project
The overarching objective of this research is to address the inclusion paradox noted above by developing an equity-centered process for facilitating the meaningful involvement of people living with disabilities in the inclusive design of new multi-family housing. The proposed research has four phases:
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- Scholarly Literature Review: Identify and review existing literature focused on the co-design of housing intended for people living with disability.
- Prototyping an Equity-Centered Process for Inclusive Design: Develop an equity-centered process for involving people living with disability in structured conversations with industry stakeholders regarding the inclusive design of housing.
- Inclusive Design Pilot: Utilize this equity-centered process to co-create an inclusive design for new multifamily housing that is accessible and affordable.
- Equity-Centered Inclusive Design Toolkit: Drawing upon the learnings gained from the inclusive design pilot, develop an accompanying toolkit for industry stakeholders in the development of future multifamily housing.
References
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Goodwin, I., Davis, E., Winkler, D., Douglas, J., Wellecke, C., D’Cruz, K., Mulherin, P., Liddicoat, S. (2022) Making homes more accessible for people with mobility impairment: A lived experience perspective. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 57, 956–969.
John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights (2022) Report on the Status of People Living with Disability in Alberta. Edmonton, AB: Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights, URL: https://www.jhcentre.org/news-and-events/2021/8/30/news-release-radical-inclusion-report, Accessed October 15, 2023
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Imrie, R. (2003). Housing quality and the provision of accessible homes. Housing Studies, 18 (3), 387–408.
Imrie, R. & Hall, P. (2001) Inclusive Design: Designing and Developing Accessible Environments. London, Spon Press
Morris, S., Fawcett, G., Brisebois, L., and Hughes, J. (2018) A demographic, employment and income profile of Canadians with disabilities aged 15 years and over, 2017. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada
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UBC (2023) Housing Needs Assessment Tool. URL: https://hart.ubc.ca/housing-needs-assessment-tool/ Accessed October 15, 2023
Zeeman, H., Wright, C., and Hellyer, T. (2016a) Developing design guidelines for inclusive housing: a multi-stakeholder approach using a Delphi method. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 31: 761-772
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