Learning about street design from the disabled and their carers
Introduction
Prior to March 2017 I would walk the footpaths, pavements and other routes around my home town, and elsewhere, without thinking that there was any kind of problem with them. If there was an obstruction, I’d walk around it. It took a major ‘life event’ for me to see things differently.
It was in that year that my partner, Viv, was struck down by a mystery neurological condition, one symptom of which was that she was unable to balance or control her legs. Following a spell in hospital she was discharged, and, after some rehab, by June that year we were equipped with a wheelchair; I could take her out to enjoy some aspects of everyday life that we both had previously taken for granted: the fresh air, shopping, going to friends’ houses, even the odd trip away, with the wheelchair folded up and fitting well in the boot of our small hatchback car.
Prior to receiving the wheelchair, my only experience of ‘pushing’ another human in a wheeled conveyance had been some twenty-five years earlier, when the relevant human was my son, in his pushchair. I had no reason to ever think that getting around, pushing my eight stone partner in a wheelchair, would be any more difficult than pushing my perhaps two stone, three-year-old son in his buggy, when I was much younger and fitter. I soon found out how wrong I was.
Challenges faced
It's fair to say that not all of the challenges I faced out and about as a ‘pusher’ were down to poor footway design. There were a number of aspects of a wheelchair for which I was unprepared, including:
The small wheels at the front don’t ‘lock’ in the way buggy ones do;
The centre of gravity is much higher than that of a child in a buggy;
The brake may be inaccessible to the pusher.
These have consequences when on imperfect surfaces.
Once I had managed to get Viv, in a wheelchair, outside our front door my troubles began. We live on a ‘shared space’ street, there is no proper pavement outside our house. I had placed our car a short way out from the mini-kerb, so that the wheelchair could be on a flat surface beside the passenger door for her to transfer to the car - very much as advised by our physio.
Car positioned for transfer
This meant that the offside of the car was perhaps 2.5m from the mini-kerb, that is, much further out than a car would normally be parked. While I was helping Viv into the passenger seat, a car came around the corner of our road and the driver was rather surprised to see a car where he wasn’t expecting it. He swerved and drove off, shouting abuse about my apparent incompetence at parking. I have to admit I shouted back relating an opinion that he, or someone he loves, might find themselves in a ‘chair one day.
After this experience we adjusted our techniques of transferring into the car, so that we used the space on our drive behind our house rather than the road in front.
We didn’t just want to go out in the car, of course. A mini-supermarket opened on the development on which we live, and I wheeled Viv the 200 yards or so down there to stock up on essentials and to see something of normality. These trips revealed some hazards in the street design: the obvious route to use was a road that had grassed verges rather than pavements.
The road to the supermarket
These grassed verges had become uneven and rutted, and the front wheels of the ‘chair would catch on obstructions - giving rise to a risk of the ‘chair toppling over. The road space - that is, the part of that road between the kerbs - features traffic calmers formed of irregular blocks, with grooves separating them, seemingly to create a noise when vehicles pass over them too fast. The front wheels on the ‘chair would, however, catch in the grooves, also providing an opportunity for the chair to topple over. (It didn’t take long to realise the importance of Viv using the lap belt on the chair!)
Elsewhere on our development we found tarmac footpaths that don’t join up - the few yards of grassed area in between becoming muddy in winter, spreading dirt onto hands and clothes; also steps or kerbs where dropped kerbs or ramps should have been provided.
Of course, we ventured into our local town centre, and retail park as well. There we found many obstructions, clearly placed without a thought for the wheelchair user.
Steps and planters protruding
Cars selfishly parked
Cycle racks, fortunately empty
Narrow pavement and traffic light
Badly placed bins
Oh, and like many wheelchair users, Viv did experience life much closer to vehicle exhausts, and we did so enjoy the pleasure of cleaning dog poo off our wheelchair!
In addition to obstructions, there were other footway features that, as ‘pusher’, I found more challenging than I would have liked. Dropped kerbs are essential, but, if badly implemented, they give rise to quite a steep camber on the pavement: some wheelchairs steer rather like a shopping trolley, and the weight of the user will pull them towards the road, often quite firmly, when you want to continue along the pavement.
Other slopes also caused us problems. In particular, there is a humped-back bridge close to our town centre, on the downward side of which the weight of the wheelchair and user made it difficult to control; the position of the brake on some of the ‘chairs we used left the user quite vulnerable, especially since the pavement there is quite narrow, and the road busy.
Finally, one problem I had never experienced pre-caring arose at a set of traffic lights in a nearby town: it was almost impossible to push Viv across the road in the time that the ‘little green man’ allowed.
Causes of the footway issues
The main reason these issues exist, I believe, and in five words, is that few in society understand disability.
Statistics from Disability Sport (ref. 1) seem to indicate that perhaps around 3% of the population have current experience of wheelchair use - as a user or carer. Similar proportions are blind, or sufficiently hearing impaired, to require a hearing aid. Even adding these together, and assuming that there is no overlap, fewer than ten percent of the population have close experience of disability.
An - admittedly unscientific - straw poll of three people, between the ages of 16 and 30, revealed that none of them had had any education regarding what life is like for the disabled. The National Curriculum for Key Stage 4 Citizenship (ref. 2) includes ‘Pupils should be taught about … diverse national, regional, religious and ethnic identities in the United Kingdom and the need for mutual respect and understanding’ - but nothing on disability. (The author does not question the importance of the stated objective of the curriculum, but notes there is no requirement for pupils to be taught about disability.)
It is therefore unsurprising that the less mobile face so many challenges, for any decisions that are taken that give rise to the kind of obstructions and issues I have documented are possibly most likely taken by younger members of society; disability, and experience of disability, is more prevalent among the older population.
In addition, there are issues with the planning process: large developments are approved through a number of planning applications, the early ones for the ‘grand picture’, followed by applications for individual phases of perhaps a couple of streets, maybe thirty houses. This fragmentation can result in inconsistencies and discontinuities: in my experience, hard surfaced footpaths not meeting, forcing pedestrians to walk over grassed areas, or differences in levels, with no dropped kerb or slope connecting the two areas. This may be caused by a failure to correctly envisage pedestrian flow when considering planning applications, which might also explain some footway obstructions.
It may also be the case that developers should be subject to more control to ensure their delivered projects comply with the Equality Act: at present there are opportunities for them to claim exemption, or to blame the local authority planners for any failings on their part.
Ideas on how to address these societal problems
It’s surprising how little attention is paid to making the outdoors a good place for pedestrians and the less mobile: The Health Foundation produced a list of ten ‘Healthy Streets Indicators’ in 2018 (ref 3 ), recognising that issues in the streetscape do indeed impact on our individual health, and, therefore, on demand on the NHS.
The author believes the fundamental problem is a lack of knowledge of what will cause difficulty to some, if not all, pedestrians. Albert Einstein is reported to have said ‘the only source of knowledge is experience’. You can tell people something, only a proportion will believe you. If they experience it, and think through what happened, they’ll remember. We could just ask the disabled and their carers to provide feedback on footway design and configuration; unfortunately, those that have the most difficulty are, from my experience, not at all able to spare time to provide that feedback.
I therefore believe that, in order to improve the suitability of footways in the UK for use by everyone, a far greater proportion of the population needs to experience disability, and caring for a disabled person.
I believe there are three target audiences for such education: school children, students studying for a town planning qualification, and the general public.
4.1 Education targeted at school children
The author finds it difficult to comprehend that the UK National Curriculum appears to place no obligation on schools to teach pupils about the needs and challenges faced by the disabled. It is surely a topic that should be included in Citizenship; by doing so the UK would, over a period of years, benefit from generations of young citizens who understand aspects of care and disability, deploying this knowledge in whatever field of work they happened to be employed.
It must be possible for schools to teach some elements of what it is like to be wheelchair-bound, blind or deaf, with an emphasis on practical exercises in near-real streetscapes, to give experience and understanding related to spatial awareness or balance. For instance, pupils could be paired off - one to be ‘disabled’ in a wheelchair - with legs bound together, the other ‘carer’, and then spend some time simply trying to move around a ‘town’ - possibly in the playground, going in and out of buildings, over different surfaces, and transferring from wheelchair to seat (as in a car), the ‘carer’ at all times aiding the ‘disabled’. Likewise, for blindness, the ‘disabled’ could be equipped with blurring goggles and a white stick, the ‘carer’ being there to aid them and to ensure they do not suffer injury. Deafness could be simulated with loud white noise, supplied through headphones, enabling the ‘disabled’ to experience ‘not hearing’. Classroom sessions might then be used to follow up on the practicals, to discuss how certain challenges faced by the ‘disabled’ might have arisen, and how similar problems could be prevented.
It is surely possible that, in the space of perhaps five or six double periods, school children would be able to experience what it is like to suffer from, or be a carer of someone with, various forms of disability.
4.2 Education targeted at Town Planners
In 2003 the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister produced a report, ‘Planning and access for disabled people: a good practice guide (ref 4)’. It includes text such as:
Developments designed to be inclusive are likely to have an enhanced market value as occupiers and other purchasers of property become increasingly aware of the economic disadvantage of excluding such a substantial percentage of the population. Occupiers now realise that inclusive environments are suitable for a wider range of people and is (sic) therefore more sustainable.
There is also the text:
If a development is designed to be accessible from the earliest concept stages, an application for planning consent is unlikely to be refused or delayed on the grounds that it does not meet appropriate access standards. This minimises or avoids the potential for delay - with obvious commercial benefits. In contrast, developments which are not designed to be accessible will find local authorities 'policing' the statutory requirement for inclusive environments ever more effectively - and the potential for delays will increase.
This was written ten years before my home was built, and seems to be no more than wishful thinking; in 2017 the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee produced a report (ref. 5) that, especially in its comments on Shared Spaces, more or less says as much. In my experience, developers are keen only to squeeze as many properties onto a development as they can, and local authority planners, in general, do not have the experience necessary to challenge them from an accessibility point of view.
The author believes they should have that experience.
While preparing this paper the author contacted the Royal Institute of Town Planning and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, asking about disability-related content in training curricula for town planners and surveyors. He had not received a response before the deadline for submissions.
Education targeted at school children will, in due course, help qualified town planners to understand the needs of the disabled, but it will be many years before all town planners have that experience. It may also be that planners will benefit from more in-depth experience of life as a disabled person, or carer - for instance, experiencing, first hand, the appropriateness of various road surfaces for wheelchair, or walking frame, users. Students of planning-related subjects may require significantly more training than will be possible at school.
4.3 Education targeting the general public
The problems faced in our streets by those with limited mobility are not going to be solved just by educating children and improving the training planners receive. There is a case for advertising, or ‘public information films’, highlighting the problems experienced by the less mobile, for example,
Parking on pavements
Blocking pavements with bins, overgrown hedges, litter
Out of control dogs
Pavement cycling and e-scooters
Dog fouling
Poorly managed building works
Specific advertising in, for example, trade magazines could be used to highlight problems caused by A-boards, delivery vehicles, outdoor seating and displays, and such like.
4.4 Enforcement, legislative, statistical and planning changes
Some problems that the less mobile face on our streets arise, the author believes, because of poor enforcement of existing regulations; better education should result in local authorities being more aware of hazards and the importance of them being cleared, and, where necessary, progressing to take enforcement action.
However, many obstructions and problems are caused by behaviour that is not, currently, liable to enforcement action, and, in these cases, Government must consider changing the law. For instance, pavement parking causes two problems: one immediate - that some pedestrians find it difficult to get around a vehicle parked on the pavement, and one subsequent - that pavements may not be constructed to take the weight of a vehicle and such parking may damage the surface, leaving trip hazards or low-level obstructions to be faced by pedestrians. The DfT consulted on pavement parking in 2020 and is understood to be planning to extend the London-wide ban nationwide.
In addition, there seem to be certain exemptions, or grey areas, in developers’ obligations under the Equality Act. These should be reviewed and addressed; the optimism expressed in the 2003 report (ref. 4) regarding developers and inclusive development might now be considered to be rather generous.
There may be a need to change the way large developments are approved in the planning process. From the author’s experience, having one development of around 1800 homes created using many planning applications, each relating to perhaps only thirty homes, has resulted in a disjointed end result: footpaths do not join up or are blocked, pavements are missing from roads that receive more pedestrian usage than was expected, and journeys that were indicated to be possible on initial plans turn out not to be. There is a clear need for there to be a ‘big picture’ understanding of the end result, especially from the pedestrian point of view, and the developer to be held to deliver it.
A further improvement to the planning process would be for planning authorities to be given an obligation to seek to improve public, often peripheral, footways around properties when planning applications are under consideration; at the very least, there should be a requirement for footpaths and pavements to be upgraded to modern standards and dimensions, and obstructions and past encroachments addressed, when a property is redeveloped.
A final proposal would be for Government to record statistics on accidents or injuries recorded at a level where street layout issues can be identified as a cause. Prior to 2002 the Department of Trade and Industry produced the HASS/LASS reports, recording the reasons for admissions to hospital A&E departments. No similar data is recorded now; RoSPA is understood to be working to correct this (Ref 6).
Likely benefits
Many benefits are likely to arise if there were more awareness of disability in the population as a whole; these would not just be confined to more accessible paths and footways.
The scope of this paper being street design, the author has considered likely benefits and considers the following would arise if proposals based on the above ideas were to be implemented:
Safer streetscapes for all - fewer trip hazards, more consistent and level surfaces, better separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, safer crossings. (In 2011, ‘there were 26.4 thousand emergency admissions to hospital for falls on the street or highway’ (ref 7); a Healthwatch survey in Central Bedfordshire in 2017 (ref. 8) reported that 57% of their sample of over-65s had tripped on a pothole)
Better prioritisation of local authority resources to address issues
Improved design of retail areas, residential developments, business and industrial areas
More considerate behaviour on the part of the general public
Greater acceptance of enforcement of contraventions.
References
‘Facts and Figures about disabled people in the UK’, Disability Sport, 2014
https://www.disabilitysport.org.uk/facts-and-figures-about-disabled-people-in-the-uk.html
‘Statutory guidance - National curriculum in England: citizenship programmes of study for key stages 3 and 4’, 11 September 2013
‘We need to talk about healthy streets’, by Lucy Saunders. The Health Federation, 2018.
https://www.health.org.uk/blogs/we-need-to-talk-about-healthy-streets
‘Planning and access for disabled people: a good practice guide’, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2003
House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee. Building for Equality: Disability and the Built Environment. April 2017.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmwomeq/631/631-large-print.pdf
Accident Statistics - RoSPA
https://www.rospa.com/resources/statistics
Reported Road Casualties in Great Britain: 2011 Annual Report, Department for Transport.
Healthwatch Central Bedfordshire - Falls Prevention Survey, 2017
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