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Inclusive Design and Accessibility of the Built Environment in Nairobi, Kenya

PATRICK, M
MULDOWNEY, A
KILIMANJARO BLIND TRUST AFRICA
TANUI, G
BUKACHI, V
CAMPBELL CLAUSE, J
McKINNON, I
October 2022

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Prepared by the Global Disability Innovation Hub and partners for the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

This case study, funded through UK aid AT2030 programme, explores the current situation of inclusive and accessible environments for people with disabilities living in Nairobi. The research findings detailed in this report describe the current challenges and opportunities for embedding inclusive design in Nairobi’s future, providing priority recommendations and forward-thinking next steps.

The research took place in three phases between July 2021 and January 2022, combining both virtual and face to face approaches. Phase 1 focused on understanding the current state of accessibility through desk research and interviews, phase 2 captured the lived experience of people with disabilities utilising interviews, photo diaries and co-design activities. Phase 3 then synthesised findings, running multiple workshops to create actions towards inclusive environments. Thematic analysis was applied to understand the research data, identifying key themes across three different stakeholder groups of People, Policy, and Practice.

The themes identified span across daily life, poverty, transport, housing, sanitation, public spaces and recreational activities. Quotes from participants are interwoven into this report, and strengthen the concluding actions towards inclusion.

 

Listen Include Respect: International Guidelines for Inclusive Participation

Inclusion International
June 2022

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The Listen Include Respect guidelines help organisations understand what they need to do to make sure people with intellectual disabilities are included in their work.

​They were written by Inclusion International and Down Syndrome International.

Over 1,500 people with intellectual disabilities and their families from almost 100 countries helped write them.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) tells us that all people with disabilities have the right to “meaningful participation.”

“Meaningful participation” is what happens when people with intellectual disabilities get everything they need to be fully included, participate equally, and feel valued.

These guidelines will help organisations to make this happen.

A Global Agenda for Inclusive Recovery: Ensuring People with Intellectual Disabilities and Families are Included in a Post-COVID World

Inclusion International
June 2021

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This report documents the experience of exclusion of people with intellectual disabilities and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences reveal pre-existing structural inequalities that affected the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and their families before COVID-19, during the pandemic, and beyond, and this report raises up the voices of those most excluded in a time of global crisis and demands an inclusive COVID-19 recovery.

 

This report includes the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities and families across eight different issue areas. Across these themes, we examined how and why people with intellectual disabilities were left out and excluded in pandemic responses, what pre-existing conditions and inequalities contributed to their vulnerability and exclusion, and how future policy structures could begin to address both this immediate and systemic exclusion.

 

Together, these experiences and policy solutions form our global agenda for inclusive COVID-19 recovery, an action plan to ensure that government efforts to ‘build back better’ are inclusive of people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

Accessibility audit costing

BROWN, Simon
SCOTT-PARKER, Susan
2021

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This excel sheet provides organisations a structured method to disaplay recommended activities for ensuring accessibility.

World Report on Hearing

WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO)
2021

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The World Report on Hearing (WRH) has been developed in response to the World Health Assembly resolution (WHA70.13), adopted in 2017 as a means of providing guidance for Member States to integrate ear and hearing care into their national health plans.

Based on the best available evidence, this report presents epidemiological and financial data on hearing loss; outlines available cost-effective solutions and sets the way forward through ‘Integrated people-centered ear and hearing care’ (IPC-EHC). The report proposes a set of key H.E.A.R.I.N.G. interventions that must be delivered through a strengthened health system to realize the vision of IPC-EHC. 

The WRH was developed in collaboration with experts and stakeholders in the field of ear and hearing care who informed the report’s strategic direction and ensured that it reflects a range of cultural contexts and approaches to hearing care. The report is global in its reach while keeping a special focus on low- and middle-income countries, where the number of people with hearing loss is not matched by the availability of services and resources.

The disability-confident employers' toolkit

BROWN, Simon
SCOTT-PARKER, Susan
November 2020

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Here you can find all documents in one zipfile that relate to the disability-confident employers’ toolkit: a unique portfolio of practical guides, checklists, case studies and resources that make it easier for any business to be disability confident.

A basic guide to accessible communications

BROWN, Simon
SCOTT-PARKER, Susan
November 2020

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This document provides a guide to improving accessible communications in the workplace. Demonstrating you don’t need to be an expert in digital accessibility – the basic principles are easy to understand and apply.

The essential checklist for disability-confident recruiters

BROWN, Simon
SCOTT-PARKER, Susan
2020

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This document translates disability-confident principles into a practical checklist for HR and recruitment specialists. The checklist works to best-practice principles. Much of this guidance goes beyond compliance with any disability discrimination legislation.

Accessibility GO! A Guide to Action, Delivering on 7 accessibility commitments

AL JUBEH, Kathy
DARD, Benjamin
ZAYED, Yana
November 2020

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The World Blind Union (WBU) and CBM Global Disability Inclusion have developed Accessibility GO! A Guide to Action. The guide provides practical support on how to deliver a wholistic organisational approach towards accessibility. It describes how to progressively achieve seven core accessibility commitments across built environments, information and communications, procurement of goods and services, training and capacity development, programmes, meetings and events, recruitment, and human resource (HR) management. The guide offers pathways to progressively realise accessibility in various contexts and organisations; recognising that users of the guide will be diverse.

Impact of lived experiences of people with disabilities in the built environment in South Africa

McKINNEY, Victor
AMOSUN, Seyi L.
August 2020

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Background: In spite of legislations and policies to ensure an inclusive society in South Africa for the accommodation of people with disabilities, there are reports that they still struggle to move freely within society.

 

Objectives: As part of a larger qualitative exploratory study on the preparation of undergraduate civil engineering students in a local university to contribute to the development of an inclusive society, this article seeks to understand the impact of the lived experiences of people with disabilities in their interaction with the built environment.

 

Method: Four persons with disabilities, considered to be knowledgeable about South African legislations relating to disability, were purposely selected to each share one specific experience whilst interacting with the built environment. The transcribed texts of the interviews were analysed by using the phenomenological–hermeneutic method.

 

Results: The participants exhibited strong desires to participate in society. However, the sense of loss of control and independence as they encountered challenges in the built environment changed the euphoria to disempowerment, rejection, anger and despondency. In spite of their experiences, participants expressed a commitment towards overcoming the challenges encountered in the broader interest of people with disabilities.

 

Conclusion: A deeper understanding of the impact of the experiences of people with disabilities when they participate within the built environment in South Africa revealed a broad spectrum of negative emotions, which may impact the quality of life and well-being of the participants.

 

 

African Journal of Disability, Vol 9, 2020

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Amid COVID-19

UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS
Ministry of Social Development
Independent Commission for Human Rights
June 2020

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This document make specific recommendations on support and protection to be provided to persons with disabilities during the COVID-19 response, and to ensure that appropriate measures are in place to maintain their active participation as well as to avoid discrimination at all levels against them

Required to be creative. Everyday ways for dealing with inaccessibility

WÄSTERFORS, David
2020

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Today’s society promises that people with disabilities can access anything, but in practice there are numerous obstacles, and the ways in which people deal with them can be easily missed or taken for granted by policy makers. This article draws on a project in which researchers ‘go along’ people with disabilities in Sweden who demonstrate and recount accessibility troubles in urban and digital settings. They display a set of mundane methods for managing inaccessibility: (a) using others, (b) making deals and establishing routines, (c) mimicking or piggybacking conventions, (d) debunking others’ accounts and performing local politics. The employment of these shared but tailored methods shows the difficulties to be accepted that people with disabilities still face, as well as the wide-ranging tension that exists between the grand rhetoric of inclusion and modest results. The tension implies that people with disabilities are required to be creative.

  • Declarations and policies often say that people with disabilities should have access to anything, but in practice this is not the case.
  • This study investigates what people with disabilities actually do when they have trouble accessing various places or resources. The results show their common and practical ways, and these ways are often taken for granted, overlapping, and combined.
  • People with disabilities ask others to support them when they face troubles to access places or resources, they make deals with important actors and they develop routines. They also observe, imitate and follow others’ actions, to pick out precisely those ways that suit their needs.
  • When people with disabilities find their ways in today’s society they also act with words. They argue against other people’s excuses or justifications for not providing access.
  • The study has found a lot of frustration among people with disabilities who get blocked, excluded or delayed. This gives them motives to engage in politics.

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