Reimagining Mobility: Collecting Data. Creating Plans. Removing Barriers?

A graphic showing the cycle of lack of access and mobility in the built environment and how that impedes community participation which feeds limited societal views of disability, which contributes to inaccessibility in the built environment. — Click to view the captioned and transcribed video on YouTube.

On November 18, 2021 Dr. Yochai Eisenberg shared successes and challenges in the pursuit of accessible pedestrian networks. We discussed community mobility as it relates to accessible pathways, use of public transportation, and modes of travel to destinations.

Dr. Eisenberg described a systematic mobility evaluation, detailed some of the findings, and shared the conclusion that communities in the U.S. do not have strong plans for building accessible pathways. He stressed that the solution includes meaningfully involving people with disabilities, so that transition plans can help cities.

Dr. Yochai Eisenberg is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago and affiliated researcher at the Great Lakes ADA Center. Dr. Eisenberg studies the ways in which neighborhood environments, policies, and systems impact community mobility, health behaviors and health outcomes for people with disabilities using a blend of big data analytics, policy evaluation, and community engaged research.

Dr. Eisenberg’s research has contributed to better understanding implementation of ADA transition plans for the public rights of way in the US, rideshare use and satisfaction among people with disabilities, and accessibility of environments that support healthy, active living. Dr. Eisenberg’s interdisciplinary work reflects his training in public health (Ph.D.), urban planning (Master’s) and disability studies and is interwoven in his undergraduate course that explores the links between disability, urban planning and geography.

Join the Reimagining Mobility conversation

Join us for a series of conversations imagining the future of mobility. Hosted by CREATE Associate Directors Kat Steele and Heather Feldner, we connect and learn from guests who are engaged in critical mobility work – ranging from researchers to small business owners to self-advocates. We will dive deeply into conversations about mobility as a multifaceted concept, and explore how it intersects with other dimensions of access across contexts of research, education, and public policy.

Upcoming conversations

Stay tuned. 2022 series to be announced.

Past conversations

Flyer summarizing the information on Conversation Hub topics for Fall 2021 — Download the Fall 2021 flyer (PDF)

Reimagining Mobility: Inclusive Architecture

Karen Braitmayer, seated in her wheelchair on the observation deck of the Space Needle, with full view of Seattle because obstructive walls were removed in a remodel — Click to view the captioned and transcribed video on YouTube

On October 13, 2021 Karen Braitmayer shared images from her experience of— and critical goals for— inclusive architecture. Noting that the best and brightest designers might come in bodies that are different than employers expect, she called for design schools to welcome students with disabilities and for design firms to hire and support the careers of designers with disabilities.

First steps for designers:

Provide options: wider seats, different height soap dispensers, etc.
Learn about building codes and regulations.
Talk to folks who have already figured out how to accommodate for their own disabilities and hack for accessibility.

Karen Braitmayer using a wheelchair in a modern building with stairs and ramps

Architect Karen L. Braitmayer, FAIA, is the founding principal of Studio Pacifica, an accessibility consulting firm based in Seattle, Washington. Her “good fight” has consistently focused on supporting equity and full inclusion for persons with disabilities.

In 2019, she was chosen as the national winner of the AIA Whitney M. Young, Jr. award—a prestigious award given to an architect who “embodies social responsibility and actively addresses a relevant issue”. In the award’s 48-year history, she was the first recipient honored for their work in the area of civil rights for persons with disabilities. Braitmayer was also appointed by President Barack Obama to the United States Access Board, a position she retains today.

Join the Reimagining Mobility conversation

Upcoming conversations

Stay tuned. 2022 series to be announced.

Past conversations

Reimagining Mobility: Inclusive Living and Home Design

This UW CREATE event has passed. Continue to read a summary and watch a recording of the session. Sign up for future Reimagining Mobility Conversations.

You are looking for your first home – you’d like an open layout, 3 bedrooms, a big garage, lots of light, and easy access for your wheelchair. How many homes fit your criteria? Do the listings consider manual wheelchairs or bulkier powered wheelchairs with larger turning radii? These are just the start of the questions Barry Long would ask when viewing homes.

Barry Long is an advocate for people with disabilities who is helping to make real estate more accessible. In our third Conversation Hub session, Long shared how his passion for relationship building and helping others–combined with experiences as a manual wheelchair user, Dad and real estate broker–evolved into becoming a voting member of the Washington Building Code Council and advocating for standards for real estate listings.

Watch the conversation with Long about opening the door to accessible real estate and get a virtual look inside homes reimagined for inclusive living.

Reimagining Mobility: Smart tech for mobility, health and agency

This UW CREATE event has passed. Sign up for future Reimagining Mobility Conversations.

Brothers Barry and Jered Dean set about to design and engineer an addition for the powered wheelchair experience for Barry’s daughter, Katherine. In the process they discovered tensions between what has been defined as smart technology and what users want to support their mobility, health, agency, and privacy. In our second Conversation Hub, they shared lessons learned and entertaining anecdotes in their journey from tinkerers to founders of LUCI, a powered wheelchair add-on accessory that supports greater independence and safe navigation with features like collision avoidance and tip/drop off warnings that can be tuned to the driver’s preferences.

Captioned video of our online event

Favorite quotes from our discussion

“We have to realize there’s a dignity in risk. It’s okay that somebody’s gonna do something that maybe I wouldn’t do, or the technology doesn’t agree with.”

Jered Dean

“I understand the logic of having a large sample size and sometimes that gives you great clarity, but sometimes it gives you great mediocrity or great generalization. In songwriting we’re taught as professionals, the more connected you want to be with your audience, the more specific you will need to be. So especially in country music, you use incredibly detailed things.”

Barry Dean

Event description

The CREATE Conversation Hub hosted a live discussion with LUCI co-founders and brothers, Barry & Jered Dean. LUCI was founded after the brothers began designing and engineering an addition for the motorized wheelchair used by Barry’s daughter, Katherine. The changes were meant to make it safer and “smart,” connecting it to the internet so she can interact with the same up-to-date technology a lot of people use.

Through this process they found tensions in what was defined as smart technology to support mobility, health, agency, and privacy. We read and discussed Judging Smart, a guide the Dean brothers developed that offers initial ideas and questions around the concept of smart technology in power mobility.

The cover of the PDF Judging Smart: A framework for assessing "smart" technology in power mobility today by Jered Dean. Features a person wearing a pair of stylish boots on a power wheelchair.

Jered Dean is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at LUCI, where he brings his decade-long experience in new product development to life, including acting as the former director of Capstone Design at the Colorado School of Mines. Jered founded LUCI in 2017 with his brother, Barry, in hopes of creating a technology that could improve life in a power wheelchair for his niece, Katherine.

Barry Dean is an award-winning songwriter turned wheelchair technology founder. As CEO of LUCI, Barry seeks to provide security, stability and connectivity for power wheelchairs. He founded the company with hopes of building a smarter solution for his daughter Katherine and all power wheelchair riders. He is a founding writer at Creative Nation Music, Recording Academy (GRAMMY) Nashville Chapter Governor, and has previously served two terms as a board member of the Nashville Songwriters Association International.

Reimagining Mobility: A Conversation with Sara Hendren

This UW CREATE event has passed. Continue for a summary and to watch the entire online session. Sign up for future Reimagining Mobility Conversations.

To launch the Reimagining Mobility Conversation Hub series we could think of no better guest speaker than Sara Hendren. Part of reimagining is examining the current state of the world, reframing our viewpoints, and having the courage to try new things. Sara’s work really epitomizes this process.

Sara Hendren shared her perspective on the future of mobility and lessons she learned through writing her new book, What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World.

In our Conversation Hub session, Hendren examined what it takes to move through the world with a disability, accounting for the affordances (or lack thereof) of the built environment and creative design that simultaneously facilitates participation and challenges ableist assumptions about design. She shared examples of how we can think past the better known examples of high tech prosthetics and universal design to also consider low tech, highly individualized access solutions. She discussed the universal human experiences of interdependence and dependence (rather than independence) as we navigate our world.

Hendren is an artist, design researcher, writer, and professor at Olin College of Engineering. Her work spans collaborative public art and social design that engages the human body, technology, and the politics of disability — such as a lectern for short stature or a ramp for wheelchair dancing. She also co-founded the Accessible Icon Project.

Bright yellow image from a book cover with the title 'What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World' and author 'Sara Hendren.' — Cover of Hendren’s book, What Can a Body Do? In the presentation, she explains the choice to have the text run past the boundary of the space.