Inclusive Practices Blog Task 1: Disability

Systemic Inequality, Visibility and the Creative Potential of Lived Experience

Ade Adepitan (ParalympicsGB, 2020) speaks about the experience of being Black and disabled, two marginalised identities whose intersection creates a distinct form of vulnerability and lived experience (Center for Intersectional Justice, 2022; Crenshaw, 1989) resulting in further exclusion, making him a target for both racial and ableist discrimination. Comparing historic racist oppression to ableism, he underlines that “What disables people is not their disability, it is society” and its systemic discrimination and oppression. His experience shows how exclusion is engrained in a system that is unwilling to tackle inequality and reluctant to create platforms for all people to shine.

Christine Sun Kim, a Deaf woman, mother and artist, also foregrounds how gender, disability and class intersect to shape her experience of systemic inequality (Shape Arts, 2021). It is often societal structures, such as lack of affordable childcare, economic precarity that disable people like her. For Kim, the solution is about visibility and representation. “If you don’t see us, we have no place to be.” (Shape Arts, 2021). For her, scale equals visibility, and visibility has the power to shape social norms. Christine’s experience highlights that equality, and inclusivity is about belonging: the sense that one’s identity is seen, welcomed and celebrated.

At UAL, 18% of students have a declared disability, though the Disability Service estimates the actual figure is closer to 50%, with many students choosing not to declare (UAL, 2024). This data, seen through the lens of architecture education is concerning: Only 1% of registered architects in the UK identify as disabled (ARB, 2023).

Poppy Levison, a visually impaired BA architecture graduate reiterates the importance of visibility and representation. When she studied at CSM, she didn’t have any blind role models in architecture (UAL, 2024). Her intersecting identities made her disabled by a field that is both visually dominant and male-dominated. If disabled students and practitioners are not represented in the curriculum and in the references we use, the practitioners we invite and the graduates we celebrate, how are giving them place to be?

As a white, abled bodied woman and architectural practitioner, my privileges have shaped my understanding of space and long prevented me from fully comprehending the lived experiences of disabled people navigating the built environment. I was predominantly taught by white, male, able-bodied architects who never asked me to think how to design for multiple bodies and abilities. Yet it was only through working with displaced communities and campaigning for inclusive cities that I began asking: who is architecture for, and who is invited to belong?

These questions feel more relevant than ever now, when pregnancy makes the gendered and abled-bodied city visible to me in high definition. Disability in architecture is often reduced to ramps or accessible toilets, when there is enormous creative potential in embracing lived experience. This logic shapes both architectural education and built space: when access is taught in architectural schools, it is taught as a building regulation, which perpetuates the view that it is a problem to be solved, rather than a creative and political dimension of practice. As Boys (2019) argues, access treated as compliance is access as afterthought, not design.

Inspired by Mia Mingus (2011), I believe it is our role as architecture educators to create safe and brave spaces (Arao and Clemens, 2013) where we can embrace difference, confront privilege and challenge what is considered ‘normal’. Teaching architecture to a varied range of students with different needs, I see the classroom as the space where we can depart from our bodies, the stories they hold and the lived experience they carry, as the starting point for understanding other experiences of space; thus, recognising that there are many different ways of occupying and moving through space. In this way we can start treating disability and other intersecting experiences as a generator of creativity and critique to co-develop design solutions that respond to a multiplicity of needs and experiences.

References
Arao, B. and Clemens, K. (2013) ‘From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice’, in Landreman, L. (ed.) The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections from Social Justice Educators. Sterling, VA: Stylus, pp. 135–150. 

Architects Registration Board (2023) Architects today. Available at: https://arb.org.uk/architects-today/ (Accessed: 3 May 2026).

Boys, J. (2019) ‘The DisOrdinary Architecture Project: A handy guide for doing disability differently in architecture and urban design’, The Funambulist, 19. Available at: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10088538/1/JosBoys-DisOrdHandyGuide-Funambulist19.pdf (Accessed: 1 May 2026).

Centre for Intersectional Justice (2022) ‘What is intersectionality?’, Centre for Intersectional Justice. Available at: https://sharing4good.org/article/what-intersectionality-center-intersectional-justice (Accessed: 1 May 2026).

Crenshaw, K., 1989. ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine’, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Policies. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, 139–167.

Mingus, M. (2011) ‘Changing the framework: Disability justice’, Leaving Evidence, 12 February. Available at: https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/changing-the-framework-disability-justice/ (Accessed: 15 May 2026).

University of the Arts London (2024) Equality, diversity and inclusion annual summary report. London: UAL. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0022/480901/PS24559-EDI-annual-report-2024-20250731.pdf (Accessed: 3 May 2026).

University of the Arts London (2024) ‘Meet Poppy Levison: Designer, researcher and disability activist on inclusive design and education’, University of the Arts London Press Office, 20 December. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/press-office/stories/meet-poppy-levison-designer,-researcher-and-disability-activist-on-inclusive-design-and-education (Accessed: 3 May 2026).

ParalympicsGB (2020) Ade Adepitan interviewed by Nick Webborn [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAsxndpgagU (Accessed: 3 May 2026).

Shape Arts (2021) Disability and gender: A conversation featuring Christine Sun Kim [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NpRaEDlLsI (Accessed: 3 May 2026).