Where Are My People? Disability in Architecture

In this work, “disability” is understood expansively, recognizing the breadth of lived experiences and conditions that shape both professional and personal realities. To situate the conversation clearly, it is important to define key terms:

• Disability: A physical, mental, cognitive, or sensory condition that substantially limits one or more major life activities. Disability is not solely an individual medical issue but a social and structural experience shaped by environments, policies, and culture.
• Accessibility: The practice of ensuring environments, tools, and systems can be used by people of all abilities, removing barriers that prevent full participation in professional and civic life.
• Universal Design: An approach to design that seeks to make spaces, products, and experiences usable by the widest range of people possible, regardless of age, ability, or circumstance.

The following definitions represent an amalgamation of statements used by the U.S. Census Bureau and leading researchers in the field of disability studies, adapted here to reflect both boundaries and experiential understandings of disability. This list is not exhaustive but seeks to encompass the diverse forms of ability and identity within the nation’s largest minority group, people with a disability.

• Hearing Disability: Individuals who are Deaf, deaf, or hard of hearing, even when using a hearing aid. This includes people who experience partial or complete hearing loss and those who communicate using spoken language, sign language, or a combination of methods.
• Visual Disability: Individuals who are Blind or have low vision, even when using corrective lenses. This includes people with total vision loss, as well as those with limited vision that affects daily activities or navigation of the built environment.
• Cognitive Disability: Individuals who experience changes in memory, attention, learning, or decision-making because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition. This may include difficulties with processing information, problem-solving, or concentration.
• Neurodivergence: Individuals who think, learn, or process information differently because of conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, or other neurological differences. While some neurodivergent people identify as having a disability, others do not; this category ensures their experiences are still recognized.
• Ambulatory/Mobility Disability: Individuals who use mobility aids (such as wheelchairs, walkers, or canes) or who navigate the built environment in ways other than walking or climbing stairs. This includes those with partial mobility, chronic pain, or conditions that affect endurance.
• Self-Care Disability: Individuals who require support, adaptations, or assistive technology for daily activities like bathing, grooming, or dressing. These needs may stem from physical, cognitive, or emotional conditions.
• Independent Living Disability: Individuals who benefit from support with everyday tasks such as managing appointments, shopping, or navigating systems because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition.
• Communication Disability: Individuals who communicate in ways that may differ from others, including how they express themselves or understand others. This includes those who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), interpreters, or other supports to interact.
• Chronic Illness: Individuals living with long-term health conditions such as diabetes, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, or autoimmune diseases that may not always be visible but impact daily activities, energy levels, and participation in professional or social life.

Acknowledging the importance of disability in architecture requires managing parallel perspectives at the same time. For architects and designers with disabilities, professional life often includes negotiating systemic barriers that affect hiring, advancement, studio culture, and participation in projects. These barriers may be physical, such as inaccessible workplaces or design tools, or systemic, such as discriminatory hiring practices, limited mentorship opportunities, and underrepresentation in leadership positions. For architects and designers without a disability, these realities are frequently invisible, last minute adaptations, or reduced to narrow interpretations of accessibility codes. This gap in understanding not only harms people with disabilities but also limits the profession’s ability to design inclusive and equitable environments. By bringing these perspectives together, this research seeks to challenge who we design for and provide pathways for all professionals to grow in their understanding of disability, accessibility, and universal design.

Our inquiry always starts by asking questions. Where is the data on architects and designers with disabilities? How is disability understood by designers? What is the history of harm against people with disabilities? Where in the design process should accessibility be considered? Let’s start with the history.

The history of disability rights in the United States demonstrates how hard-won every measure of access has been, and how deeply intertwined it is with broader struggles for justice. Long before the disability rights movement of the 1970s and 1980s, people with disabilities were systematically excluded from public life through both cultural exclusion and legal restrictions. These so-called “ugly laws” were first passed in the late nineteenth century and were not repealed in some cities until the 1970s. These laws made it illegal for people with visible disabilities to appear in public if their appearance was deemed “unsightly” or “offensive.” Marriage and reproduction were also policed through discriminatory statutes. Fueled by the eugenics movement, dozens of states passed laws prohibiting people with disabilities from marrying or having children in the early twentieth century. These laws culminated in forced sterilization policies upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927), which legitimized the sterilization of people with intellectual disabilities and sanctioned a legacy of state violence that lasted for decades.

This long and shameful history of systemic oppression laid the groundwork for the modern disability rights movement. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, advocates pushed back against centuries of disenfranchisement by securing incremental legislative victories. The Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 required that federally funded buildings be accessible, a modest but critical first step. The Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1970 mandated wheelchair lifts on new buses, signaling a recognition that public transit must serve everyone. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, particularly Section 504, prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities in federally funded programs and services, establishing a precedent that disability rights were civil rights. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), guaranteed access to free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment for children with disabilities. The Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 and the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 extended protections into transportation and housing, areas where barriers to participation had long persisted.

These earlier legislative wins set the stage for more visible and confrontational activism in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1977, disability activists staged a month-long sit-in at federal offices to demand implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Their protest was sustained by solidarity from the Black Panthers, union workers, and women’s rights advocates, a powerful reminder that progress is built through coalition. In 1990, the Capitol Crawl brought national attention to the ongoing inaccessibility of public spaces, as people with disabilities physically pulled themselves up the steps of the U.S. Capitol to demand change. Later that same year, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law, prohibiting discrimination and mandating accessibility standards. The ADA is a critical civil rights law that ensures that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else, comparable to earlier protections based on race, gender, or religion. By framing disability rights as civil rights, the ADA recognized people with disabilities not as passive recipients of charity, but as full citizens entitled to dignity, equity, and participation in society. Yet the shadow of earlier policies—ugly laws, eugenics, sterilization, and segregation—reminds us that the fight for access and justice has always been shaped by histories of harm. The disability rights movement is not simply about compliance with codes, but about dismantling entrenched systems of exclusion and reimagining a society where all people can thrive.

For architects and designers, the ADA is especially critical because it directly shapes the built environment. Title III of the Act requires that places of public accommodation and commercial facilities be accessible, and the ADA Standards for Accessible Design establish technical requirements that guide everything from entryways and restroom layouts to signage, seating, and communication features. These standards serve as the legal minimums for accessibility, a benchmark every architect and designer must incorporate into their work. Yet the ADA’s importance extends far beyond technical compliance. It marks a shift in professional responsibility, requiring architects and designers to confront the fact that design choices can either exclude or empower, themes that have emerged in every other part of the Where Are My People series. An inaccessible ramp slope, a narrow doorway, or an unreadable sign is not simply a design flaw, it is a civil rights violation that undermines independence, safety, and dignity. In this sense, the ADA connects design directly to public health, safety, and welfare, reinforcing the ethical obligations of the profession.

The ADA also laid the groundwork for universal design. For architects and designers, this means rethinking assumptions about the “standard” body or mind and instead embracing human diversity as central to the design process. The ADA thus becomes both a legal framework and a catalyst for innovation, inviting professionals to design environments that are not only compliant but equitable and adaptable. Ultimately, the ADA is important to architects and designers because it demands accountability. It challenges the profession to reckon with histories of exclusion and to create spaces where people with disabilities are not merely accommodated but fully included. In doing so, it redefines what it means to design for the public, substantiating that the public includes everyone.

Despite these hard-fought advances, architecture continues to fall short of full inclusion. Scholars such as Wanda Katja Liebermann (Architecture’s Disability Problem), Andrew Gipe-Lazarou (Blind Design Workshop), and David Gissen (The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes Beyond Access) demonstrate how the built environment is often conceived without disability in mind. This absence is visible in inaccessible public spaces that undermine safety and dignity, in housing policies that neglect the needs of people with disabilities, and in social spaces designed with exclusivity as their default. Everyday spaces like kitchens, bathrooms, and classrooms continue to be designed around an imagined “standard” body, leaving those with different needs to adapt or go without. Even when legal accommodations are offered, they are too often treated as exceptions rather than integral to the design process. The collaborative work of the Critical Design Lab at Vanderbilt University and The DisOrdinary Architecture Project in London are forefronting Critical Access Studies across architecture and design. Their current project, Disability Meets Architecture, questions the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of “access” by curating a series of conversations to discuss radical ways to reimagine accessible design.