“People with disabilities have always confronted barriers between their bodies and the built world.”

I’m sure most of us know the limits people with disabilities face when roaming the different parts of this world. But few truly understand how far-reaching the issues are. This book, “What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World”, by Sara Hendren is eye-opening, informative, and a wake-up call. It shows us how the world isn’t quite built for diversity. Previously, I have written a review on Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places and Stories by Joshua Mardell and Adam Nathaniel Furman. In the case of queer spaces, the lack of diversity in the built world is about spaces that don’t accept (or welcome) everyone. While in the case of this book, it’s more about the design not considering the different types of bodies that roam the earth. Having public and private spaces that are inclusive shouldn’t be about having people with disabilities adapt themselves to the built environment, through prostheses for example, but rather, rethinking and redesigning the built world in a way that it is easily accessible to all bodies. Many times prostheses rather seem like a solution for those on the other side of the situation. A solution that makes the person with the prosthesis look more, in our cultural definition of it, “normal”.

“The emphasis on restoring the visual features of a body so that the loss and difference, the before and after, might be undetectable.”

Instead of this way of thinking, we should start imagining a world where solutions meet the body where it is instead of trying to restore the body to what it was or should have been. It’s not necessary to have technologically advanced solutions for people with disabilities to be able to do their daily tasks without constantly needing to ask for assistance. It can also be a collection of cable ties that assist a quadruple amputee in her everyday life or a chair made of cardboard for a toddler with “developmental and epileptic encephalopathy, which creates significant barriers to even everyday motor skills”. When it comes to architecture, there are also things we can do to be more mindful of people with disabilities. From obvious things such as ramps for those in wheelchairs to the incorporation of half-height walls in a place where the primary method of communictio is sign language. Offering visibility throughout the whole space. Here, in a space designed primarily for people that are deaf or hard of hearing, it’s also important to make a conscious selection of colors for the walls. Colors that provide a clear contrast with different skin tones, making hands and finger motions easier to be seen. It is solutions like these that we need more of in this world. Solutions that go beyond the simple use of prostheses or the implementation of a ramp, but that smartly solve the issues those who use them face in other situations. Solutions that involve the affected parties in the process from the beginning and truly respond to their needs. Because, whether you realize it or not, all of us, sooner or later, will go through a certain level of disability in our lives. Sooner or later we will all need assistance in one way or another. Only when we realize and understand what this means and we start to think about these issues from small scale to large scales, and start taking the right actions, can we achieve a built environment that is inclusive for all.

“[…] all of us will live with disability at some point in our lives.”

The book also includes history lessons on, for example, how the word “normal” went from being used by carpenters (to refer to something being perpendicular) to being used as a way to describe average human characteristics. Or how our use of chairs evolved as a historical expression of status and rank. A symbolism that still exists today. Think for instance at the usage of “chairing a committee”. Other examples include how a woman with arthritis inspired the OXO Good Grips line when she found herself in need of a better vegetable peeler. So much more changes and adaptations to the built environment and our understanding of disabilities came from those who found themselves in a need of better solutions and from the several disability activism movements of the past century. I found it quite interesting the two different ways of seeing disabilities presented in the book. The first one is looking at the body as where the disability lies and, the second, is looking at the world that makes people with disabilities unable to do certain things. Due to being designed for what they call “normal” people. For a long time, we have been trying to standardize the human race and design for those standards. While in reality, disability is a common part of human life. You may be born with it, or it may appear after an accident or illness. Only then do we realize how the world isn’t designed for everyone. By designing for minorities, we end up designing for all.

Each chapter in this book (Limb, Chair, Room, Street, and Clock), is as inspiring, uplifting, and educational as the previous one. They each tell a story of how people with different disabilities find themselves limited by the built environment and how they have managed to adapt, not their bodies to the environment, but the environment to their bodies. Teaching and questioning our everyday use of words and our way of thinking and seeing certain things. Challenging our very understanding of what it means to have a disability or what it means to need assistance in life. A body is never not-extended. Every technology we use is assistive technology. But why do we only call “assistive technology” those that help people with disabilities?

“[…] the human animal is co-extensive with its tools.”

In conclusion, “What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World” is a beautifully written book that is both personal and educational. It’s a book that inspires one to start thinking of different solutions to problems that have always existed for a (surprisingly large) amount of people, but that we have never really paid attention to. It inspires creative solutions that don’t require total reinvention. It restarts the conversation about disabilities and the countless ways people misunderstand them and the many hurdles people with disability have to constantly confront.

Back in Argentina, this was a topic I used to think about a lot in the final years I lived there. About how the public space, a space meant for everyone to use, wasn’t exactly designed in a way that everyone can use it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not only happening in Argentina. But since I was studying architecture there, my eyes were more open to seeing such situations. But, if I think about it, I can easily find similar (or worse) situations when thinking about my home country Curaçao. And I wonder why I rarely saw people in wheelchairs making use of the public spaces around the island. It isn’t hard to figure out of course. I rarely saw wheelchair users simply because the built environment isn’t built in a way that is accessible to them.

In the end, I am left thinking. How can I play a role, as a recently graduated architect, in creating accessible spaces for all? What is my purpose when it comes to this topic? I am certain that I would like to dedicate my professional career to improving these aspects. Some ideas are circling around in my head. After all, I did choose to buy, read, and review this book for a reason. Now, having acquired a new perspective and more insight into the topic, I can say it is time to take action. And for those of you who still haven’t read the book, it is time for you to do so as well. Most definitely if you’re playing a critical role in designing spaces, whether public or private. Because your actions directly impact those who will be inhabiting these spaces. Either immediately after they are created, or further down the line when circumstances change, when our bodies change.

“What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World” was written by Sara Hendren and published by Riverhead Books.