Breaking Barriers: How to Structure Environments to Support Accessibility Needs

This July marks the 33rd anniversary of the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This historic law, which prevents discrimination against people with disabilities, is celebrated throughout July as Disability Pride Month. The law addresses multiple environments where discrimination might occur, including in the transportation sector, in communications, in receiving local programming and services, and perhaps most significantly, in the workplace. How can being mindful of disability accommodations in the workplace have positive outcomes for everyone, no matter one’s disability status? 

It’s likely not difficult to recall a time when you had trouble communicating or collaborating at work. This might’ve been a result of the work environment failing to meet your need to 1) understand, 2) feel competent and clear-headed in your work, and 3) meaningfully contribute to your organization’s goals. Now imagine that you identify as having one or more physical, intellectual, or developmental disability. How might it feel to consistently navigate environments in which your needs aren’t being considered? How might these unique challenges intersect and overlap with the existing workplace challenges that we all already experience? The three domains of the Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) framework can help us understand the issue of accessibility in the workplace and implement potential solutions. 

Building A Model for Inclusivity

One of the three domains of SEE describes our need to increase our understanding of the world by exploring new environments and ideas. We refer to this as “building a mental model” of the world, or “model building,” for short. This exploration is, at its core, information gathering from other people and the general environment. In order to build a shared mental model of a community that is inclusive of people with disabilities, there must be people with disabilities actively involved in discussions of community structure and function. The inclusion of a diverse group of people in these conversations, all sharing their own stories, not only contributes to building that shared mental model of what our community looks like, but it also contributes to the creation of mental models about a life experience that is different from our own.

“People want to understand and explore the world around them. They resent things that don’t make sense to them.”

Several disabilities, especially those that are invisible or complex, are ones that many people lack familiarity with. In essence, they “don’t make sense” to us, because we don’t have a basis, or a model, for understanding them. By including more individuals with varying disabilities in our conversations about accommodations, we can begin to get a glimpse of a different life experience. This approach fills a critical information gap, allowing people to form a more robust mental model of what life can look like. Looking beyond the workplace, it also creates a more informed community that feels capable of advocating alongside those with disabilities for the essential accommodations they need.

Feel Capable Through Restoration

Another domain of SEE describes our desire to feel competent and clear-headed. As humans, we have attention-related needs that stem from how we’ve evolved, and that are not always supported by our modern environments that constantly bombard us with information. Just like how our body fatigues after physical exercise or exertion, so does our ability to pay attention after focusing for extended periods of time. Everyone needs breaks to restore their attention and feel competent and clear-headed, and often, the necessary frequency of these breaks is not aligned with how we structure a typical workday.

“How are we creating space for people to take care of themselves while they bring their skills and interests to the work?”

Beyond the universal need for mental restoration, some individuals may have additional bandwidth needs to consider. Those with disabilities may experience reduced attention spans or regular periods of physical discomfort. 

Have you ever had a day at work where you had trouble staying on task or being productive because of distractions in your work environment? Maybe a co-worker paid an unplanned visit to your office, or you continued to receive disruptive texts and phone calls from a well-intentioned family member. For individuals who identify as having a disability, these interruptions may feel more pronounced or produce additional stressors that place a greater strain on their time and mental resources.

When we increase our focus on mental restoration and individual well-being by including people with disabilities in the development of supportive structures, we ensure that mental restoration will be more accessible to everyone. Embracing inclusivity will not only benefit individuals with disabilities but also foster a more productive and compassionate work environment for all.

Meaningful Action and the Reinforcing Impact of Accommodations

Another domain of SEE describes the desire to know that your actions are making a difference or having a positive impact, referred to as “meaningful action.” This need is shared by everyone; we all want to contribute to conversations and actions that will positively impact those around us, and be asked to participate in making these changes a reality. To achieve this, we have to consider any barriers to participating in these conversations in order to expand positive impacts through collaboration. In the way our environments are often structured, individuals with disabilities may not always be able to participate in important workplace or local community conversations. We can explore this in the context of a larger team meeting in an office environment:

• Is the meeting location accessible by wheelchair?

• Is there enough seating for all of the attendees? 

• Are there accessible restrooms nearby? 

• Will there be an interpreter available for American Sign Language, or any handouts printed in braille? 

• Are there multiple ways to participate and give feedback, besides having to / needing to speak in front of everyone? 

• How long is the presentation or discussion? And will there be breaks if the meeting is longer than 1 hour?

“People thrive when environments, policies, and projects encourage genuine participation and allow people to do things that matter.”

Making these necessary accommodations for colleagues with disabilities in your workplace and community is not only essential for their ability to contribute toward meaningful actions that are ongoing, but is itself a meaningful action. Considering these accommodations will have a visible and positive impact on the cohesion and connectedness of our shared environments.

Bringing It All Together

Here, we have begun to build a mental model of what our workplaces and communities can become when we consider the needs of others. They can:

• Actively include those with diverse perspectives and experiences when building a shared understanding

• Allow the freedom to take restorative breaks as a tool for feeling capable, and

• Value and encourage everyone's participation so that they know they’re making a difference

Rachel Fink is a 2023 reDirect Fellow collaborating with the City of Ann Arbor’s Office of Sustainability and Innovation. She is a current Master’s student at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Appalachian State University.

From Planning Routes to Planning Cities: SEE Can Help

Moving to a new place can be overwhelming. Our sense of home is so much more than the building we live in; it is a dynamic relationship between person and place. Will I have access to a pharmacy that stocks my medications, a grocery store that offers culturally-appropriate foods to soothe my homesickness, a pet store that caters to my diabetic cat? Are there sidewalks and public transit to connect me to these places, and in a timely fashion? Can I get there easily? Safely? Wherever we move, novelty and uncertainty are our new next-door neighbors.

Now imagine a reality where you have not moved, but a layer of nuance is introduced to your once familiar setting and brings with it the same questions. Your location has not changed, but in some way your environment has, destabilizing your routine and threatening your ability to get your needs met. Our first reaction is often to avoid this disturbance and preserve our sense of place. But changes to our environment will always take place. How can we learn to better adapt to these changes? This is where the work of an urban planner can help.

Photo by Isabella Beshouri

Urban planners propose changes to established communities for a variety of reasons: to expand public transit and improve mass mobility; to rectify a history of racial injustice by remedying entrenched segregation; to mitigate climate risk, and to adapt civic life to be resilient in the face of the unavoidable. The aim of planning should be to foster environments that are supportive of human and environmental health, center equity and justice, protect public safety, and improve physical and socioeconomic mobility, all the while enshrining local character to foster community identity and pride of place.

It’s a lot, so it’s good that we are not doing it alone. This mission is unattainable by any one group or vision, and so requires public participation during the design and implementation of changes. As planners, we can draw on aspects of the Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) framework to facilitate community-wide visioning sessions and to support them as their environment shifts. At the nexus of value and practicality, lessons from the SEE framework are worthy additions to the participatory design toolkit:

Model Building

Most of the time, the motivation to attend a community listening session is not to sit and receive the project’s elevator pitch. It may be important for residents to know about plans for new traffic signal coordination, but their motivation to learn about such plans is likely related to concerns for how the changes might be disorienting as they navigate the city.

Photo by Sydney Mark

Many proposed changes to the built environment are requests for permission to disrupt our painstakingly constructed mental models; models built from experience, and heavily relied upon to make sense of the world around us. Mental models are the hidden subject of development no matter the project. It is important to greet public comment with an awareness of these emotional pressure points and what inflames them. With an empathic understanding of what we are asking, we can think more deeply about how to support stakeholders through their model-building process when we propose changes.

Model building support can take many forms, from facilitating Focused Conversations to enlisting virtual reality. Community engagement is a complex and locally tailored process; there is no one-size-fits-all approach that transcends physical and social geographies. But, with an understanding of mental models, we can more effectively facilitate a feedback process by starting from where participants are at with their own understanding, and being mindful of the shared language we use to frame the problem and the proposed solution, making sure to avoid jargon. 

Being Capable

The desire to gain knowledge and explore is ingrained in human nature, but our capacity to absorb knowledge is mediated by the limits of our directed attention, as well as how competent we feel in applying the new knowledge. To support the model-building process, information is best delivered at the intersection of clarity and brevity. Less is more; both to preempt information overload and to leave space for processing emotions and uncertainty. We also want to feel heard and like we are a part of the process. When both are considered, the community engagement process unfolds into a matter of helping our neighbor weatherproof their mental models so that they feel prepared to navigate a slightly different world.

Meaningful Action

Through complementary initiatives and campaigns, urban planners can create the tools and space for citizens to draw connections between urban systems and their personal identities. They can help enliven civic life by infusing meaningful action into such systems; whether by striking a parallel between transit use and sustainability through a summer-long challenge to reduce personal commuting emissions, or by hooking our thrifty impulse with a calculator that compares monthly automobile gas to transit pass budgets; there is a draw to participation in the public space for all of us.

We are always trying to find meaning within our everyday lives. The inlay of meaningful action within our routines helps us feel accomplished and useful; it adds a layer of intentionality that renews elements of civic life that may have lost their luster with time and repetition. With time, strategies that reinforce meaningful action can lead to an enduring pride-of-place; together with efforts to support model building and effectiveness, positive feedback loops of public interest and trust-building can emerge.

Photo by Isabella Beshouri

There is an innovative dialogue between urban planning and the SEE framework, prompted by their orbit around a common inquisitive core: How can we leverage our environments to bring about the best version of our society, our communities, and ourselves?

We use “home” as a noun: it can be a place where we raise our family, get creative in the kitchen, and take refuge after a long day.

We also experience “home” as a verb: finding our identity between the spaces we inhabit and the spaces we don’t; organizing and visioning with our communities to transition spaces from liveable to lived-in; developing our sense of self in parallel with the communities we build. This process is not always organic, straightforward, or comfortable, but when it comes to changing our environments for the better, we’ve got to SEE it to believe it.

Isabella Beshouri was a reDirect fellow during the summer of 2022, working with the city of Ann Arbor’s Office of Sustainability and Innovation to help grow and improve the city’s A2Zero ambassador program.

SEEing our Way to Solar: Using Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) in Program Analysis

Incorporating Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) in program analysis is a great way to understand a program’s success, as well as potential areas for improvement. This past summer, I had the privilege of working with Julie Roth from the City of Ann Arbor to take a closer look at what is making the Solarize program so successful in the Ann Arbor area. We wanted to uncover what elements of SEE were contributing to this success, as well as how SEE might inform the expansion of this program to other regions.

Ann Arbor, Michigan. Credit: Denis Tangney Jr. Getty Images

In short, the Solarize program is a group- buy program for solar installations. This means that a local host, organizer, and installer work together with a group of residents to secure bulk-buy discounts on residential solar installations. The program has seen exponential growth since 2019, but similar initiatives throughout the state have struggled to gain the same momentum. By using the SEE framework, we were better able to understand what is contributing to the success of Ann Arbor’s program, as well as what can be improved in future iterations.

There are three elements of SEE that represent our human need for information: model building, being capable, and meaningful action. These are not distinct elements working in isolation, but rather complimentary and dynamic facets of the framework as each one supports and perpetuates the next. Model building is essential to understanding what action needs to be taken and how to complete that action. Being capable is having the physical and mental resources to carry out that action. Finally, meaningful action is the behavior itself and the purpose that it carries both for the individual and for the broader community.

Program Analysis

Specifically, program analysis can help us pinpoint which program mechanisms contribute to, or detract from each element of the SEE framework. To take a closer look at Solarize, we surveyed participants prior to group-buy presentations to identify perceived barriers to solar installation. Overwhelmingly, the results showed that the primary barrier was not having the necessary information to take action. The need for procedural knowledge is a common theme: humans don’t necessarily want more information about why they should do something, but rather how they can actually achieve it.

What we found is that offering procedural knowledge was one area in which the Solarize program excelled. Following the survey, the organizer at the group-buy event clearly provided the information needed to get solar installed. One clear step was given at the end of the presentation, and the majority of participants took this next step towards solar installation. In doing so, Solarize was creating clarity for participants—building their understanding and increasing their ability to take effective action.

However, when attempting to replicate Solarize in another part of the state, the program did not gain as much traction. It turned out that while a similar presentation was given, final directions for taking the next step weren’t as clear. The success of Solarize in Ann Arbor, brought by helping participants find clarity and feel capable, was lost in translation. Some meetings were purely informational in providing the “why”, with no call to action, while others lacked the organizational direction that characterized the program originally. As a result, participants did not have the clear guidance they needed to move forward, and few were pursuing solar installations through the group-buy events.

Now that we had this information, we had to share it in a way that would be easily assimilated into future programs. To accomplish this, we formed the following outline for group-buy events:

• Provide clear information with specific steps for participants

• Create simple, visually engaging presentations

• Limit the amount of information per page/screens

• Highlight points of success, and the impact from taking action

A design platform, such as Canva, can help display next steps in such a way that enhances clarity by reducing the need for information to be solely presented in text. Simple graphics provide a visual anchor for each point, and examples provide a story of potential application methods. As a result, new information can more easily integrate with the existing mental models of the audience.

Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that less is more; focusing on a few key points in program analysis can make a significant impact. Limiting the amount of information on each page can make what is presented easier to process and retain.

Finally, it is critical to elevate points of success. This encourages program facilitators and fosters a meaningful connection to their work. By emphasizing what is going well, team members feel capable and motivated to tackle areas that may need improvement. Reminding program team members about the bigger picture and the meaning behind their work can have a lasting, positive impact on morale, and do the same to inspire further action from participants.

An approach that reinforces the information needed to act, supports the ability to act, and establishes a meaningful connection to the bigger picture, can help create the type of community environment for solar energy to flourish. While both simple and intuitive, these steps can have a profound impact on the success of a program. By using the SEE framework, we can provide supportive environments for programs to achieve durable, transformative change.

Tara-Sky Woodward was a reDirect fellow during the summer of 2022, working with the city of Ann Arbor’s Office of Sustainability and Innovation to help study the success of their A2Zero Solarize program.