People with disabilities will experience discrimination in many ways during their daily life; one way being the presence of physical barriers in the public built environment which prevent their full participation. Within the EU and in Germany, regulations and building standards are the primary tool used for ensuring accessibility within the built environment, however, full and equal access for people with disabilities has not been achieved. This discrepancy indicates the limitations of accessibility through standardization and regulation. Physical barriers, such as stairs, have long been identified and understood to prevent access for people with disabilities, however, there seems to be relatively little scientific literature discussing temporary forms of barriers which also prevent access in the built environment. This research project aims to identify and understand barriers which create temporary inaccessibility for people with disabilities. These barriers may reflect unregulated or unenforced situations within the public built environment, one example of this type of situation being construction sites. Of particular interest is the role temporality plays within the development of barriers and accessibility. The primary research takes the form of go-along case studies with three participants, each having a different disability or impairment. The setting for these case studies is Europaplatz, a plaza at Berlin’s central train station; this location can be considered as a critical case, findings here should be archetypal and can be expected to hold true in other similar situations. The research shows the existence of many temporary barriers which have long lasting inaccessible impacts for people with disabilities. These barriers primarily stem from the presence of nearby construction sites and activities. In most cases a small amount of initial consideration towards accessibility would have prevented these temporary inaccessibilities. Even after their creation, very minor changes could remove these barriers and create a more accessible environment. My research indicates that there are serious problems around construction related activities which create barriers for people with disabilities. A clear lack of consideration for accessibility during the planning, approval and oversight of construction activities is shown.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-53528 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Stüssi, Erich |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för Urbana Studier (US) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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