Inclusive Environments | Interview with Iain McKinnon of GDI Hub
Iain McKinnon MEng NRAC | Director at Global Disability Innovation Hub - Inclusive Design
What is your career background?
My name is Iain McKinnon and I'm currently the Director of Inclusive Design at an organisation called the Global Disability Innovation Hub or GDI Hub for short. GDI Hub is a research and practice centre based out of UCL and is the world’s first WHO Collaboration Centre for Assistive Technology. We work in a lot of different areas, but the golden thread that runs through all of our work is disability and disability innovation. Disability innovation is not just a product, service or policy or service. It’s a way of thinking that puts disabled people at the centre.
In our consultancy work, we provide expertise to this end, which is applicable across almost every sectoral area. The area that I lead in is inclusive design - primarily in the built environment – which is the process of making our infrastructure work for everyone in a just and fair way. That's an area that I've worked in for my entire career, in fact I was the Inclusive Design champion for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London post-2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. I was there for about eight years and learned a huge amount. It was off the back of the Paralympic legacy programme from 2012 that GDI Hub was born.
We now predominantly work in developing countries across Asia and Africa. Our Inclusive Design work is mostly focused on cities within low middle-income countries. Often these cities are themselves doing a huge amount of development, building and infrastructure work, and in a lot of cases, they are further ahead in the inclusion journey than many high-income countries. We're sharing the learnings we collect and wider knowledge to ensure that, where it’s possible, every opportunity for and every lesson we’ve learnt on inclusive design, is adopted.
2. Can you describe what an inclusive environment looks like?
It should not be obvious to anyone, it should be invisible like it's not something that you would walk into and say, this is an inclusive environment. It's just an environment. The one thing you may notice is that there's a richer diversity of people in it. I guess that is something that you may notice.
Image courtesy of Erect Architecture of the Timber Lodge & Tumbling Play area at the Olympic Park, London. All Images subject to copyright
We're not talking about add-ons or bolt-ons or specialist equipment. It's about good design that thinks about the widest possible range of users and is relevant to the context of wherever you are.
Whatever country or city you're in, you have to acknowledge the local contexts and demographics, but within them, ensure that you've considered a really broad range of diversity in your planning and designs, and that all members of society can enjoy and use the space that you're creating.
3. Why does an inclusive environment matter?
Because disabled people, older people, and others, have the right to live independently and to live as part of the community. Although I don't think anyone would intentionally set out to design places that people can't access or use, or that discriminate, it happens all the time. For me, it's often a lack of good education on the subject. Oftentimes when I see or have reviewed designs that are bad, because they don’t consider good inclusion and inclusive design - it's often just because of ignorance or lack of knowledge and understanding rather than malice.
You want to create places that everyone can benefit from and share and bring together diverse communities that are going to thrive. To create exclusions or zones or pockets where people are trapped or stuck and can't access is not good for society in general, it’s not good for education, or for business.
Unfortunately, we still live in a world where, for many, access to environments are poor, leaving people excluded, and so inclusive design is a way to try and help with that.
“I don't think you can over-state just how important our role in the design of the built environment is, in shaping people's lives and their experience of life.”
Image courtesy of Erect Architecture of the Timber Lodge & Tumbling Play area at the Olympic Park, London. All Images subject to copyright
4. What are the effects of a non-inclusive environment on users?
It can have very serious effects. Non-inclusive environments exclude people from being able to contribute to society, to engage in daily life, to live life to their full potential, to take part in society. These are all things that can have a huge detrimental effect on your life and the way that you feel and your ability to take part in life and enjoy it. It's enormously impactful, so it's hugely important. The knock-on effects are considerable and can affect people's health. It can affect people's mental health. I don't think you can over-state just how important our role in the design of the built environment is, in shaping people's lives and their experience of life. When you break it down, it's really fundamental. It's so important that you do it in the right way and in an inclusive way.
5. How can designers keep users at the centre of their designs?
Ideally, you would have designers or people in positions of influence who are able to make key decisions and ensure that inclusion if a part of the process. You would want those people, individuals, teams, or groups to themselves be diverse and have diversity within them. This broad range of understanding and experience would then be brought to bear on projects and on designs.
On the Olympic Park, we had a group of local disabled people, with lived experience of different disabilities, and experts with professional experience and expertise, that came together. Part of my role was to facilitate discussions with design teams who would come in and present to the Built Environment Access Panel, in a constructive way. This is important and part of my role was to keep it as positive and as constructive as possible. We all wanted the same outcome, which was the best possible design and to critique those designs and push the designers for the best outcome and to highlight any areas that were not good enough or that could be better.
It was great to have that dedicated resource. Their role existed to provide accountability and responsibility, and to support and to follow through so that the points that the panel were raising weren't just raised and then dismissed but actually followed through. When it was built, you could visit it and you could physically point to stuff and see what we did because you could remember that comment or that point you made and that was really nice. Having disabled people and diverse decision-makers and designers leading projects, who are genuinely engaged with the people who will actually use the space, that’s the ideal.
Image courtesy of Erect Architecture of the Timber Lodge & Tumbling Play area at the Olympic Park, cafe area London. All Images are subject to copyright.
6. Can you recommend any projects which are inclusive built environment projects for people wanting to understand the topic better?
In the UK there's an award scheme, which is called the Civic Trust Awards. Generally, It has categories like sustainability and it has an award which is called the Selwyn Goldsmith Universal Design Award which rewards projects that excel in their inclusive design. It's predominantly disability-inclusive design and good inclusion, but the focus is very much on disability inclusion, so you can see previous winners. That's quite a good resource of examples.
Obviously, we've spoken about the Olympic Park and there's one little building there that actually did win the Civic Trust Award in 2014, I think. It was quite a while ago now, but nonetheless, it's still a good example. It’s called the Timber Lodge and Tumbling Bay Playground which is a little community facility to the north of the Olympic Park. It is a very simple, small building. The toilets are for the building, but also for the north of the park because there are no other public toilets. We actually had to fight quite hard to keep the changing places toilet up there. This is a big room for people who have more severe impairments, and have one or two companions, carers or assistants with them.
Image courtesy of Erect Architecture of the Timber Lodge & Tumbling Play area at the Olympic Park, cafe area London. All Images are subject to copyright.
It's got a changing bench and a shower and a ceiling hoist and things to help move people around. We had to fight for that because it is a big facility for such a small building, and we had to keep reminding people that these toilets were for the park users and the playground users and not just for the cafe and community space. So there are a lot of nice little examples like that, but I'm a bit biased because I was involved in it!
7 . Recently at COP26, Israel’s Energy Minister, Karine Elharrar, could not attend the conference. It is natural to expect that a world event on this scale will be inclusive for all. How can we ensure that these situations do not happen?
I don't think anyone could really believe that happened. Ultimately it comes down to really poor planning for the conference. It's sad to say that I wasn't surprised. But it did happen and we too, who were hosting a side event on disability-inclusive climate resilience, found that it was extremely difficult to get answers to simple questions on accessibility. I think that sometimes for us, it is interesting because quite often we take part in events and conferences where the focus is on disability where there's good inclusive practice. We provide good access, both physical and online, with information in alternative formats and captioning, and sign language interpretation. All of these things are expected and, for the most part, delivered.
So for those taking part in a State event on Climate where the focus is not on disability, (although there were three site events on the subject of disability), it was narrow-minded not to think about the issue and not to think about the diversity of people that would attend. It’s unbelievable that it can still happen in this day and age but it does. All it would have taken, really, is for the planning for the event to have included a panel or an access specialist or consultant on inclusive design, to come in and do a thorough review of the plans for the event and to pick out all of the issues. This could have been done in a matter of hours. It’s something we at GDI Hub can do.
The response to what happened from those involved at the conference was equally disappointing. I think one of the responses was that we didn't know they were coming, which is ridiculous. You've got to anticipate that a whole broad section of the population is going to come to a global climate conference. They have a vested interest in this so as not to make the event accessible, beggar’s belief.
All the entrances should be accessible. You know if you have an entrance that's not accessible, it shouldn't be an entrance. I think some lessons were obviously learnt, but it was such a shame that it was done too late. If there is any silver lining to this, it’s that it placed greater emphasis on the subject because disability and good inclusion were highlighted in such a stark way.
8. Where can we get more information on inclusive environments?
Obviously, on our website, the GDI Hub website, there's an inclusive design page
and, we've got a link to the inclusive design standards that you can download, which is free, and provides good guidance for the built environment. That's a really good resource actually and then there are all the other resources that exist out there.
We've done some work with the Design Council in the past, and the Design Council has an inclusive design part on the Hub. If you're looking for a consultant in the UK, there is an association where you can find access and inclusion consultants, it’s called the National Register of Access Consultants.
Image courtesy of Erect Architecture of the Timber Lodge & Tumbling Play area at the Olympic Park, cafe area London. All Images are subject to copyright.