Universal Design: blind children lead the way
Wouter Verbeylen
Jasmien Herssens studied architecture at the Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst (Arts and Sciences College) and currently conducts doctoral research at K.U.Leuven and the University of Hasselt/PHL. Jasmien: “Our topic is related to two fields of research: architectural theory and Universal Design or ‘Design for All’. With respect to architectural design, we address the issue of strong visual dominance. Architects know, think and dream in very visual terms, though we actually experience buildings in a completely multi-sensorial way.”
“From this point of departure, we enter into dialogue with Universal Design, a design paradigm that was developed in the ‘90s and endeavours to create a human-oriented environment that adapts to human beings instead of vice versa. To this end, people with disabilities – wheelchair users, people with visual or auditive impairments, etc. – are given the opportunity to participate in and apply their valuable talents to the design process.”
“I decided to work with people with congenital blindness. Research has indicated that they are more attuned to non-visual sensory experience and that therefore, when it comes to multi-sensorial experience of architecture, they are experts. My research is focused on the ‘haptic’ qualities of the architectural environment. Haptics is both active feeling (when you hold an object), passive feeling (the blind, for example, can ‘feel’ how high or how wide a space is) and dynamic feeling (using a stick as an aid, for example).”
Jasmien intends to use this information to develop design parameters that may help architects to take the sense of touch into account consciously during the design process: “For example, towers in the middle of cities are classic visual reference points for designers of public spaces, but if the dimensions or building materials of a particular tower do not differ from those of an ordinary house, blind people are unable to use it as a marker to orient themselves.”
Part of Jasmien Herssens’ research involved conducting in-depth interviews with congenitally blind adults. “It was a very informative experience, especially because they gave us tours around their houses as well, which we recorded on photographs and films. We also held focus discussions with professionals who work with the visually impaired at the Spermalie Royal Institute in Bruges. The years of experience provided us with insights into the way in which people are taught to use their sense of touch.”
“For example, people are taught mobility instructions that focus on orthogonality. Very rarely do sighted people walk in a straight line from point A to point B; they like to take their own route and are often distracted by various things. The visually impaired, on the other hand, are taught to orient themselves from the axis of their own bodies. However, this does not necessarily have to be the case; you can also strive to give them the freedom to choose the winding road by changing the texture of the ground (using a combination of grass and gravel, for example).”
At Spermalie, Herssens also observed blind children during their extracurricular activities. “Children are a great deal more spontaneous than adults, they are far less culturally determined and thus, observing the way they deal with their impairment provided us with very interesting information. There was, however, one great disadvantage to this very enlightening experience, namely that young children have difficulty verbalising their impressions. I had devised a kind of hunt during which the children could start talking about their experiences spontaneously, but it didn’t yield very good results.”
“Then I was inspired by a boy who is congenitally blind, who asked if he could use my camera. He had wanted one for a long time but had never been given one. His request inspired me to develop a new method; I took the children on walks in and around the grounds at Spermalie and asked them to take photographs of the things they liked, the places they thought were pleasant, etc. The results were fantastic. Due to the fact that they do not have a visual frame of reference, congenitally blind children approach photography in a very tactile way, which often results in surprising perspectives.”
“For example, on a sloping path, they would hold the camera parallel to the slope and thus take pictures of the air instead of the slope itself. One child took photos of the play mat whilst ‘feeling’ it; he held the camera very close to the mat and took photographs as soon as he moved his hand away to feel something else. Another child photographed a goldfish in a bowl by putting the camera inside the bowl instead of next to it – at the time the child was not aware of the fact that the bowl was transparent.”
Jasmien Herssens’ method is not as strange as it may seem. “Photo-ethnography has existed for a while. It is a research method that also allows participants to take photographs and then to use those photographs as the subjects for discussion. Of course, a discussion of the photographs that were taken was not possible in this study. In my case, the method resulted in interviews about space during the photo report, insights into the way in which children take photographs and the actual end products themselves. The challenge I face now is to translate all those small, concrete observations into design parameters that can be implemented.”
Jasmien hopes to complete her doctoral project, in which she intends to present a series of descriptive design parameters, by spring 2011. “These will enable designers to start integrating haptic qualities in the design process from the outset. For many designers, designing to meet the needs of accessibility still has the connotation of ‘wheelchair accessibility’, and, what’s more, people often incorrectly fear that aesthetics must be abandoned to meet the demands of accessibility. The message we are trying to convey is that it is perfectly possible for ‘multi-sensorial’ architecture to be aesthetically acceptable on the condition that designers take the principles of ‘Design for All’ into account from the very beginning.”
This research is funded by a specialisation scholarship of the Institute for the Encouragement of Innovation through Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT-Flanders). Supervisors: Professor Ann Heylighen (K.U.Leuven), Professor Bert Willems (UHasselt), Professor Hubert Froyen (PHL).
