Accessible America

Accessible America
Author: Bess Williamson
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2020-05-01
Genre: Design
ISBN: 1479802492

A history of design that is often overlooked—until we need it Have you ever hit the big blue button to activate automatic doors? Have you ever used an ergonomic kitchen tool? Have you ever used curb cuts to roll a stroller across an intersection? If you have, then you’ve benefited from accessible design—design for people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities. These ubiquitous touchstones of modern life were once anything but. Disability advocates fought tirelessly to ensure that the needs of people with disabilities became a standard part of public design thinking. That fight took many forms worldwide, but in the United States it became a civil rights issue; activists used design to make an argument about the place of people with disabilities in public life. In the aftermath of World War II, with injured veterans returning home and the polio epidemic reaching the Oval Office, the needs of people with disabilities came forcibly into the public eye as they never had before. The US became the first country to enact federal accessibility laws, beginning with the Architectural Barriers Act in 1968 and continuing through the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, bringing about a wholesale rethinking of our built environment. This progression wasn’t straightforward or easy. Early legislation and design efforts were often haphazard or poorly implemented, with decidedly mixed results. Political resistance to accommodating the needs of people with disabilities was strong; so, too, was resistance among architectural and industrial designers, for whom accessible design wasn’t “real” design. Bess Williamson provides an extraordinary look at everyday design, marrying accessibility with aesthetic, to provide an insight into a world in which we are all active participants, but often passive onlookers. Richly detailed, with stories of politics and innovation, Williamson’s Accessible America takes us through this important history, showing how American ideas of individualism and rights came to shape the material world, often with unexpected consequences.

Designing for the Disabled: The New Paradigm

Designing for the Disabled: The New Paradigm
Author: Selwyn Goldsmith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2012-09-10
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1135141770

Selwyn Goldsmith's Designing for the Disabled has, since it was first published in 1963, been a bible for practising architects around the world. Now, as a new book with a radical new vision, comes his Designing for the Disabled: The New Paradigm. Goldsmith's new paradigm is based on the concept of architectural disability. As a version of the social model of disability, it is not exclusively the property of physically disabled people. Others who are afflicted by it include women, since men customarily get proportionately four times as many amenities in public toilets as women - and women have to queue where men do not - and those with infants in pushchairs, because normal WC facilities are invariably too small to get a pushchair and infant into. To counter architectural disability, Goldsmith's line is that the axiom for legislation action has to be 'access for everyone' - it should not just be 'access for the disabled', as it presently is with the Part M building regulation and relevant provisions of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act. In a 40-page annex to his book he sets out the terms that a new-style Part M regulation and its Approved Document might take, one that would cover alterations to existing buildings as well as new buildings. But architects and building control officers need not, he says, wait for new a legislation to apply new practical procedures to meet the requirements of the current Part M regulation; they can, as he advises, act positively now. This is a book which will oblige architects to rethink the methodology of designing for the disabled. It is a book that no practising architect, building control officer, local planning officer or access officer can afford to be without.

Accessible America

Accessible America
Author: Bess Williamson
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2020-05-01
Genre: Design
ISBN: 1479802492

A history of design that is often overlooked—until we need it Have you ever hit the big blue button to activate automatic doors? Have you ever used an ergonomic kitchen tool? Have you ever used curb cuts to roll a stroller across an intersection? If you have, then you’ve benefited from accessible design—design for people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities. These ubiquitous touchstones of modern life were once anything but. Disability advocates fought tirelessly to ensure that the needs of people with disabilities became a standard part of public design thinking. That fight took many forms worldwide, but in the United States it became a civil rights issue; activists used design to make an argument about the place of people with disabilities in public life. In the aftermath of World War II, with injured veterans returning home and the polio epidemic reaching the Oval Office, the needs of people with disabilities came forcibly into the public eye as they never had before. The US became the first country to enact federal accessibility laws, beginning with the Architectural Barriers Act in 1968 and continuing through the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, bringing about a wholesale rethinking of our built environment. This progression wasn’t straightforward or easy. Early legislation and design efforts were often haphazard or poorly implemented, with decidedly mixed results. Political resistance to accommodating the needs of people with disabilities was strong; so, too, was resistance among architectural and industrial designers, for whom accessible design wasn’t “real” design. Bess Williamson provides an extraordinary look at everyday design, marrying accessibility with aesthetic, to provide an insight into a world in which we are all active participants, but often passive onlookers. Richly detailed, with stories of politics and innovation, Williamson’s Accessible America takes us through this important history, showing how American ideas of individualism and rights came to shape the material world, often with unexpected consequences.

Departments of Transportation, Treasury, HUD, the Judiciary, District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies Appropriations for 2006: Independent agencies FY 2006 budget justifications

Departments of Transportation, Treasury, HUD, the Judiciary, District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies Appropriations for 2006: Independent agencies FY 2006 budget justifications
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on the Departments of Transportation, Treasury, HUD, the Judiciary, District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies Appropriations
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1604
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Departments of Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2007: Justifications: independent agencies

Departments of Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2007: Justifications: independent agencies
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1564
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Departments of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 2008

Departments of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 2008
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1244
Release: 2007
Genre: Administrative agencies
ISBN:

The Promise of American Life

The Promise of American Life
Author: Herbert David Croly
Publisher: Good Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-11-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Le Viandier (often called Le Viandier de Taillevent) is a recipe book generally attributed to Guillaume Tirel, alias Taillevent. It is known, the earliest version of the work was written around 1300, before the alleged author, Tyrel's was born. Le Viandier is one of the earliest recipe collections of the Middle Ages, along with the Latin Liber de Coquina (early 14th century) and the English Forme of Cury (c. 1390). It is also famous as a book that contains the first detailed description of an entremet.