The Affordable Housing Solutions Lab has completed the initial research phases of the “Centering Equity in the Inclusive Design of Housing: Co-Designing with People Living with Disabilities” or “Equity and Inclusion in Housing Design” (EIHD) project. This project aims to address the growing need for accessible and affordable housing by establishing best practices for meaningfully involving people with disabilities in co-design processes. Three new reports from the EIHD project offer insights into how housing can be reimagined to better serve people with disabilities.
The first phase of the research set out to explore the lived experiences of people with disabilities in relation to their current and past housing situations, and their perspectives on planning and design processes. The research involved four one-on-one interviews and four small group interviews with a total of fifteen participants living in Edmonton and Calgary. The interviews asked participants to describe their current housing situations and reflect on what “accessibility” means to them. The interviews also used a series of hypothetical scenarios to explore participants’ experiences and perspectives on “meaningful involvement” in planning and design. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were analyzed thematically using a constant comparative technique. A set of thematic findings were generated pertaining to each theme: accessibility and meaningful involvement. These findings were used to create two of the reports linked below.
The reports highlight both the physical, sensory, and cognitive barriers in housing, such as narrow doorways, inaccessible bathrooms, intense lighting, and poor acoustics, as well as the often-overlooked social barriers that prevent people with disabilities from being meaningfully involved in planning and design processes. These challenges frequently undermine personal autonomy, comfort and dignity within their own homes.
Participants shared what effective design can actually look like (flexible layouts and adjustable features) to create spaces that foster a true sense of home, independence, and social inclusion. The findings highlight the value of an ethical commitment to inclusion in co-design processes to ensure end-users are supported, heard, and empowered throughout, ultimately allowing them to shape the decisions that affect their everyday lives.
Alongside these insights from lived experiences, a third report explores how housing industry professionals understand accessibility and meaningful involvement. This portion of the research involved two one-on-one interviews with a member from the private sector, and another from the community housing sector. Through semi-structured conversations we were able to reveal how terms like accessible housing, barrier-free design, and universal design are interpreted in the field.
The findings of these interviews suggest that while professionals in the industry have a commitment to accessibility, approaches used for end-user engagement lack the hands-on, person-centred involvement that people with lived experiences value. And so, there is a need for deeper collaboration and earlier involvement of end-users in the design process, to ensure that the resulting built environment exceeds the minimum technical standards and is truly accessible.
Together, these three reports share key insights from lived experiences, offering ideas for how we can move towards housing that is physically inclusive, responsive, and functionally accessible to sufficiently meet the needs of its end-users. By grounding the research in lived experiences, the reports offer clear and practical guidance on how to embed equity throughout the design process.
It is important to note that while this project aims to consider the whole spectrum of people with varied disabilities, including physical, sensory, and cognitive, we recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach to accessibility is not possible. Each disability group may require very distinct and sometimes conflicting accommodations. And so, rather than seeing a universal solution, our goal is to meaningfully involve those with differing disabilities in design processes to ensure that housing is functionally suited to each end-user group’s needs.
This phase is an important step in our ongoing efforts towards accessible housing that is equitable by design. In the coming weeks we will be inviting community members to join us in discussions regarding “strategies for inclusive design.” These discussions will feed into a toolkit that will be publically available.
Links:
Accessibility and Housing: What We Learned
Meaningful Involvement: What We Learned
Accessibility and Meaningful Involvement: Perspectives from Industry Professionals
If you have questions about this project please contact Dr. Joshua Evans at joshua.evans@ualberta.ca
This research was supported by an investment grant from the Alberta Real Estate Foundation.
