*"Society Turns Difference into Disability"*

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from "Producing Space, Producing Disability".

from "Geographies of Disability".

A book I couldn't get excerpts from is "Barriered and Bounded Places and the Spatialities of Disability" by Rob Imrie. If anyone finds one please post link, thanks.

from collection of papers/articles in "Mind and Body Spaces. Geography of Illness, Impairment and Disability" by Ruth Butler.

An example of a space that is disabling for some is a road. Children, the blind, people in wheelchairs, people with sensory processing differences to whom noise and fast moving objects are highly disorientating/stressful are all to some extent disabled by roads because it means that they become dependent on someone else to help them negotiate the space.



In "The Social Production of Space: a New Model for Understanding Disability" 2006:
One example of such an environment for many is school. But shopping malls, roads, and many other modern urban landscapes also function to disable rather than enable certain susceptible individuals/groups of people.

I find this research development very exciting ; that here and there it is penetrating that perhaps the environments we/most people take for granted are discriminatory. That how space is organised may actually/actively disable some people, render them less functional, excluding/removing them from active participation in society.

Although many people on the spectrum for instance have been contributing to the construction of an escape from the "disabling city" with the internet, there is a realisation that the physical world needs some revision too if everybody is to be taken equally into account.

Thoughts anyone? !

Last edited by ouinon on 13 Apr 2008, 2:38 am, edited 5 times in total.

The "geography of disability" is a field of studies set up on the ideas first presented by Michael Oliver 25 years ago, an analysis of disability called the "Social Model", to distinguish it from the Biomedical one.

Wikipedia has a good overview at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/social_model_of_disability

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Apr 2008, 10:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

Frankly, this goes way over my head. But I've often wondered how there can be any justification for the private ownership of land. For most of us, rent is the biggest item of expenditure. And yes, we're paying for the erection and upkeep of the houses we live in, but I still find the cost exorbitant.

The idea is that how space is organised/designed makes people's use of it more, or less, difficult, and that certain groups of people with particular sensitivities/susceptibilities are literally disabled by how some "space" is designed and run.

For example shopping malls with noise bright lights chemical piped smells to trigger appetite, the deliberate construction of spaces to encourage buying, with canned music which stimulates etc, bleach cleaners, aerosols and solvents everywhere, almost nowhere to sit down, and rules against sitting on the floors as I have discovered on several occasions, ( requested to get up) , are intensely stressful and oppressive to many people on the autism spectrum.

Many of the spaces in modern urban environments are stressful, to certain groups of susceptible individuals.

And the papers/books I quoted are now pointing out that this is a kind of discrimination, which needs challenging in the interests of equality and justice.

Because people on the spectrum, with sensory processing differences for example, are often rendered low functioning by these environments, which acts over time to exclude them, and others, from full participation in society, people are beginning to demand that spaces be designed to take everybody into acccount.

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Apr 2008, 11:34 am, edited 2 times in total.

Why did I post these quotes?

Because I felt so thrilled and relieved and affirmed by reading that a significant amount of my incapacity in society is actually to do with discrimination embodied in the very way public spaces are constructed and organised.

That it is abuse and oppression and injustice and discrimination which allows these environments to remain, that builds more of them, that gets to label me as disabled because I am highly sensitive and many such environments send me round the bend.

I posted these quotes because I am sick of hearing people say that we must like it or lump it; that society is not going to change environments because they "upset" a small minority; that it is unreasonable of me to even suggest that it should. ...

tho' i should think they wouldn't dare say that about access ramps to someone in a wheelchair...

The fact that these spaces are disabling to certain people is apparently beside the point to some/many who "like" their world like that.

I posted these quotes because I was so glad to hear that reputable writers and thinkers, out there publishing books, believe that it is indeed discrimination and oppression to continue to impose these kind of environments on people without first checking to see if they suit everyone.

I thought a few other people on the spectrum might appreciate them too.

Another good article, less precisely about geographical environment but still looking at the way in which how society is organised contributes to, in fact creates, disabilities; that if our differences were taken into account, as are those of many people, we would be literally less disabled, at:

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/ ... ussell.cfm

I think the most common we see is that space excludes those on wheelchairs.

I agree that that may be the one of the most visible such exclusions, partly because can see the wheelchair, partly because the media has talked about it, but what about all the people with Autism and Aspergers leaving fast, leaving in a state, or not even going there anymore, wherever it is, because a space is so stressful for them with their particular sensitivities.

They are "invisible", and yet access has been effectively denied; their freedom, functioning and participation has been reduced, because an environment is too chemically smelly, too noisy, too bright, too echoey, too shiny, too maze like, with piped music even in the loos in shopping malls and bars etc so can't get out of it all for a sit down in peace and quiet, etc etc.

It occurs to me that public transport is often a very difficult environment aswell, because of lack of air, of dirty seats, of close body contact with others at rush hour, of the noise in metro stations, the often peculiarly incomprehensible or out of date or missing or cryptically amended timetables.

ouinon-I highly recommend (if you haven't already seen these) Cal Montgomery's writings:
"A Hard Look at Invisible Disability"
http://www.ragged-edge-mag.com/0301/0301ft1.htm
"Critic of the Dawn"
http://www.ragged-edge-mag.com/0501/0501cov.htm

and the 3-part series of essays:
"Defining Autistic Lives"
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/revie ... n0605.html
"Selling Sickness"
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/revie ... y0705.html
"The Way Things Are"
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/revie ... t0905.html

I get the point about environments/surroundings/circumstances (aside from those inherent to the individual) being more or less "enabling" (or "disabling") to some people more than others.

Yes, I agree on your comments on the wheelchair example, and I used it because it is the most commented on (the the media, by people who use wheelchairs, etc.).

But if you take almost any example of space, it will exclude somebody. A left-handed person (which isn't even considered a disability) driving a stick on the right side of the road might feel that the space (meaning the stick on the right hand side) may be inadequate. A right handed person will obviously not see it the same way.

Space is just another thing which falls under the "ya can't please everybody" category.

Thank you very much for those links. I found this one particularly relevant in the context of this thread. Thanks very much.

Is this a thread about pleasing people, about people's tastes being catered to? No.

It's about tens of thousands of people being disabled by certain environments, designed without thought for people's differences. I recommend that you read the article above, and the two that I posted links to aswell; they help to explain the issue.

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Apr 2008, 1:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I accept that there may be some "spaces" which would always be more difficult of access to some people than others, but I don't follow why this therefore means shouldn't try to do something about it wherever and whenever possible ? We should get rid of ramps again obviously? ! !

Do you really believe that because there will be situations difficult to make universally accessible we should ignore the many hundreds of thousands of spaces where we could make a difference to so many ?

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Apr 2008, 2:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I didn't mean it as a reference to taste, just that somebody with some disability will always be left on the outside. Is it possible to design a space where nobody (with or without disability) will feel excluded in some sense?



The things you listed above remind me of a supermarket, so I'll use some of them as an example.

There may be ways to isolate products which might chemically assault a number of people's senses, but how much would it cost to do so? It's cheaper just to stack them in shelves.

I also feel slightly aggravated with how noisy a supermarket can get, I get round this issue by either going to a smaller supermarket or going on days when I know they will be less populated. How can else can the issue be addressed?

There are ways in which one can reduce echoes. Carpeting the walls is one, stacking even more and higher shelves is another, but that would mean more money coming from the owner's pockets to make it a bit more environmentally comfortable for a minority.

I also think the fluorescent lights the supermarkets use are too bright, but they are more economical, energy and money wise.

I think it really goes down to how much more do the people who produce these spaces have to pay in order to accommodate minorities? Either these things are introduced by law, which I doubt they will, or things will be the most cost effective as possible, with little or no regard to lesser known minorities

And no, people who do not suffer from these sensory issues don't know how disabling it is, they might not even think such a disability even exists and therefore feel no need to address it.

I was thinking of the cleaning products used in so many public buildings now, incl supermarkets. And how I feel panicky and stressed when there is strong bleachy or solvent smells around. I can't think straight. I just want to leave the area.
Ah, you feel "slightly aggravated"; imagine what it's like for someone who feels as if their head is being invaded by the noise in a regular supermarket environment; the air conditioning humming and buzzing, the cash tills clicking, the cleaners roaring, the incessant buzz of voices echoing through out the store. Echo reduction as you say, industrial carpets/lino too, lower and padded ceilings, etc.

Yes, higher start up cost and maintenance, and I agree that with market forces it's not likely to happen in most stores in the near future, but for any building rated essential local services for a sector I think it could be enforced with some govt subsidy so that a group of people could face shopping themselves perhaps, rather than relying on someone else to do it for them, or handle waiting for appointments, submitting forms, working, using the bank, etc.

While society sanctions it. While people don't boycott the shops with no access improvements. While people are still thinking that it's a case of "pleasing" a group of people, rather than actually reducing the degree to which they are disabled by the environment not taking into account their difference.

So because people didn't really realise how difficult it was for people in wheelchairs, or didn't really care if it was, we should never have introduced ramps? ! !

I get the impression people would rather not know or understand that the environment in which we live is often, or chronically, disabling. That the physical landscape which we inhabit, particularly in towns and cities, is a potent disabling , dis-enabling, factor.

If the spaces we move around in had been designed and organised by people thinking of sensory processing difficulties or other differences in human functioning, ( who gave a damn about it anyway) , then we might find it much easier to get around, to join in, to carry out tasks, to carry on with work or studies, to visit places, to even just do the shopping , make benefit claims, etc.

The environment designed by NTs makes so many things tiring for people on the Autism Spectrum. Exhausting.

This is a fundamental way in which NT's majority status really affects us, disables us, is by imposing their tastes on the environment, and poisoning it for us so we increasingly have to scuttle from shelter to shelter.

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Apr 2008, 3:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.