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Architects disable: A challenge to transform - Rob Kitchin
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Architecture has social and economic consequences
This 'design apartheid' has numerous social and economic consequences. Limited access to buildings means limited access to employment. This in turn means unemployment or underemployment, which means a restricted ability to earn and confines many disabled people to poor, cheap and inadequate housing, welfarist lifestyles and social dependency. Further, poor access limits the ability of disabled people to take part in social events such as visiting pubs, clubs, museums, leisure centres, cinemas, theatres, and can lead to social isolation from the rest of society.

This is not overstatement. As study after study demonstrates, disabled people are profoundly affected by access issues. Simple things like steps with no ramp, lack of tactile indicators, no accessible toilet, poor colour contrast, lack of induction loops, do have serious, demonstrable consequences that determine whether a person can get into a building or access public space and take part in the activities within. It is a fact that most buildings - public and private - in Ireland are inaccessible. Where there is access it is often inadequate and tokenistic. Any access survey or discussion with disabled people will reveal this to be the case.

Moreover, architecture, as architects well know, is not simply about form and function, it is also about symbolism and meaning. We live and interact in spaces that are ascribed meaning and convey meaning. Buildings, of course, communicate specific, maybe unintentional, messages to disabled people, as Napolitano illustrates:

'Good inclusive design will send positive messages to disabled people, messages which tell them: 'you are important'; 'we want you here'; and 'welcome'. �if the way that disabled people are expected to get into a building is round the back, past the bins and through the kitchens, what does that message communicate? How will it make a disabled person feel?'

Such messages, as disabled people in study after study confirm, have important implications for the shaping of society more broadly.

Architects are responsible for these consequences
It is the responsibility of architects to be accountable for the social and economic consequences of the buildings they design. There is no point blaming the state of the economy or the person or company that commissions the building or public space. The bottom line is architects design the buildings, it is therefore architects who disable. Architects are professionals and they should accept the consequences of their actions. They do have a voice and they do have power to shape architecture. To argue otherwise is reduce architects to technicians; the puppets of others. This is a label that I suspect most architects would reject. In this sense, architects cannot have it both ways, they are either creative, visionary, responsible shapers and developers of ideas, concepts and design, or they are not.