Beyond Architectural Barriers: Building a Bridge Between Disability and Universal Design

The paper is focused on the evolution of the concept of accessibility, by considering data of the World Health Organization (WHO) and of the Istat (Italian statistical institute). From these data it emerges that the population (worldwide and in Italy) dealing with disability represents an important share of the total. These disabilities are linked not only with disease, but also with other situation due to age, size, language, culture, job, etc. For this reason, this paper analyses how the way of seeing and dealing disability is changed over time, starting from the Italian Standard evolution. Then the action of the WHO is analyzed. The two WHO focus points are: i) disability is a health condition in an unfavorable environment; ii) disability is not a problem of a minority group within a community, but an experience that everyone, in their lifetime, can experience. All of these analyses underlined the importance of the environment influence on life of every person. Finally, the concept of Universal design UD is investigated, highlighting the importance of recognizing and understanding that human beings will have different steps in their abilities throughout their life. The originality of this research is the shifting of the attention also to people normally served by poor services, such as people of small stature, the elderly, pregnant women, parents with children in strollers, people who speak different languages and more.