Sara Hendren, What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World (New York, Riverhead Books, 2020).
My friend Andy Simons, a graphic designer, co-founder of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, and current Board Chair of the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative (a position I had from 2013 - 2019), gave me this book a year ago and it has been an eye-opener in so many respects. The Contents tells a lot without giving anything away:
INTRODUCTION: Who is the Built World Built For? A lectern for a Little Person and a laboratory with surprises. Where is disability? The universally assisted body.
LIMB. Cyborg arms vs. zip ties: Finding the body’s infinite adaptability and replacing the things that matter.
CHAIR. From “do it yourself murder” to cardboard furniture: Is a better world designed one-for-all, or all-for-one?
ROOM. DeafSpace, a hospital dorm, and design that anticipates life’s hardest choices. Rethinking “independent living.”
STREET. Geography and desire lines: Atypical minds and bodies navigate the landscape. Making space truly common.
CLOCK. Life on crip time. When the clock is the keeper of our days, what pace of life is fast enough?
The central theme here is that the built world has to accommodate all its users, if we are to accept that all people should have open access to what will make them productive, participating, enjoying members of society. This means going beyond norms and accessibility standards to create an environment that is open to all. As my colleague Geoff Ames remarked recently, we’ll all be disabled someday. This book looks at the built environment from several perspectives, including people with intellectual disabilities (the author’s son has Down syndrome). This is an excellent book for anyone working in, or otherwise interested in, the field of accessibility.