Accessible Entrance Ramp (leading to McMillan Hall)Is this the first time you’re actually noticing this? The architectural aspects of our campus buildings that provide wheel chair accessibility have become commonplace within our daily interactive environment. Accessibility is something that many take for granted; centuries of biases and assumptions about the disabled has led to the stigmatization of physical disabilities, and the marginalization of people with disabilities in the social and economic realms, thereby affecting the built environments we interact with. Only recently, as of 1990, came the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and priorities have had to change. Businesses and non-profits that provide services to the public must comply with “basic nondiscrimination requirements that prohibit exclusion, segregation, and unequal treatment”, which includes universities like WashU. These requirements include architectural standards, like removing architectural barriers, if doing so is possible (US Department of Justice, 2009). In this case, the ramp is used as an alternative to removing the barrier of stairs. To be completely honest, unless it is your only alternative, you probably won’t use this ramp. It’s a little out of the way and round-about, and almost exclusively an addition to the landscape that only those who need to use it, will use (as opposed to, for instance, elevators, or automatic door-opening mechanisms). J.B. Jackson, a landscape theorist and writer, defines landscapes as “a space or collection of spaces made by a group of people who modify the natural environment to survive, create order, and to produce a just and lasting society” (Light & Smith, 1998). In this case, our relationship to the environment is connected to the way in which we prioritize people of varying capabilities to navigate through the environment and so is very closely related to our socio-political environment. What we see here, is merely the physical evidence of political and social structures we experience daily in our university landscape. By creating legislation and instilling greater importance on accessibility for all, it affects the ways we all interact and actively change the landscape. |
SOURCES
US Department of Justice, A Guide to Disability Rights Laws, Doc. (2009). Retrieved from
http://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm
Light, A., & Smith, J. M. (1998). Philosophies of Place. Rowan & Littlefield.