“Universal Design” Approach for the Participation of the Disabled in Urban Life

OpenAlex · English

Disability can occur to anyone and anyone can have difficulties in fulfilling daily activities in a certain part of their lives.Accessibility is a crucial matter and a basic human right for the disabled people in order to join the urban life.For this reason, the physical environment must be set, starting with the planning and design stage, in a form that can satisfy the utility and accessibility requirements of disabled people.One of the most important recent concepts to enable accessible and useful spaces for the disabled is the "universal design".Nowadays, even though there is an increase in the number of scientific publications, meetings and decisions taken, the regulatory process on our current living environment is developing slowly regarding the physical accessibility.At this point, the most important role regarding the handling of social and political paradigms of disability, addressing different users, application of the principals of universal design and creating knowledge in order to increase social awareness belongs to the departments of universities that offer design courses.The subject of the study in this context is to determine the contents and the proportion of the courses (compulsory and elective) related to "universal design and "disability design", which will ensure our living environment to be accessible and independently utilized for everyone, in the course plan of the architecture, interior architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture departments in Turkey.