Discrimination in design; by design

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: Generally people think that disability is something that afflicts others. That ‘something’ is obviously apparent – someone who is wheelchair bound or using crutches or wearing leg braces is mobility impaired, someone carrying a white cane is blind, and someone who cannot utter a coherent word is dumb and mute.

What about someone who fails to read a written word without the assistance of glasses or someone for whom the world crystallizes from a haze of blurred images only on wearing corrective glasses?

How can you communicate with a person who imposes his point of view without taking yours in to consideration? Would you not instead communicate with a mute person who makes an effort to understand your point of view?

Would you rather not walk alongside a willing co-passenger, even if s/he is mobility challenged, rather than a lazy laggard? What is at display is the adoptive or the prefix ‘dis’ that reduces their ability to disability.

Disability is a part and parcel of the able-bodied routine life that makes daily chores challenging at individual levels, but the society chooses to look the other way as it offers them an opportunity to carry out routine chores with the aid of small innovations.

In the case of the conventionally challenged, the society is less accommodative. So much so that basic amenities too are hard to come by and there is even discrimination in design.

Be it public places, homes or workplaces, design is an issue that the government, town planners or even architects have been ignoring at the cost of the mobility challenged.

The worst-case scenario is when the elderly who have lead active lives are reduced to being dependents on others to meet their daily needs. The civic authorities have failed to provide the burgeoning grey population their right to live with dignity and independence that they cherished and fought for all their active lives.

More and more people today are being alienated by the sheer inability of the so-called able bodied, who take their bodies for granted.

What is needed is the integration of this section of the society in mainstream as we accept those with minor functional drawbacks. In fact we don’t even consider the latter hindrances as we are used to having them around all the time.