DESIGN FOR ALL From school to practice

1. Main objectives of the project

This project is to promote “Accessibility for all» within the framework of the built-up areas and of the public infrastructures.
It works on the principle that the persons in charge of ” Accessibility for all ” are in very first place the decision makers, local councillors for public spaces and promoters for built spaces, and Designers, town planners and architects, who apply the programs wanted by their decision makers.
The decision makers like the originators, in spite of a real goodwill, only have a very insufficient knowledge of the daily needs of the people in situation of handicap. Very often, they limit their interventions to the only respect of the national law and normative minima.

The project has as a principal objective of coordinating a set of specialised trainings in order to be able to accompany from the beginning of their academic studies and throughout their professional life the decision makers and the originators as regards urban spaces and architectural spaces organization.
These formations, based on the knowledge of the disabled persons’ daily gestures, will have to allow integrating the needs of the various situations of handicap: motor, visual, auditive and neuropsychological handicap.
It pursues as an correlative goal to extend and federate the existing networks of the project partners, the latter being training institutions, university teacher, representative of a professional organization or multimedia specialist, around the development and diffusion on training tools on accessibility for all.

2. Detailed description of the project

2.1 Problems of the project:
The need for taking into account the various types of handicaps in the urban projects and the architectural projects is recognized by all the city and construction professionals. If the goodwill is real, by a lack of knowledge and formation, the practice is very often limited to the only respect of the legal and normative minimum. In the same way, whatever is its development level, the regulation is always very below the real needs. Still, the law will never be able to regulate by itself all the gestures of the everyday life of the people in situation of motor, sensory or neuropsychological handicap. It is essential to strongly imply all the immediate responsible of the urban projects and of the architectural projects, whether they act as decision makers, administrative investors or originators. This implication must start at the initial university formation and accompany all the professional life.

2.2 Target groups:
The project is intended to the professional actors of the urban and architectural projects. These actors can be broken up into two main groups:
1 – Decision makers- investors
According to whether it is a matter of urban spaces or architectural spaces, we find in this group on the one hand the local councillors and their engineering departments and, on the other hand, the promoters of new buildings and the managers of built environment.
2 – Designers
Town planners and architects, they formulate the programs, which are given by the first group. They act as much spurred on by their clients as spurred by their own sensitivity.

2.3 Awaited project results are of two types:
– Coordinated organization of the training tools, which will accompany the two target groups on the initial training and continuous training level.
– Reinforcement and extension of the European network of trainers

3 Operational objectives:

3.1 Immediate operational objectives:
The immediate effects of the project will be felt as from the phase 2 of realization. Indeed, at the end of this phase, the general principles of the training modules will be finalized and the widespread network will start to operate with effectiveness.
The European Federation will be made up and will start to accommodate new members who come from the countries of the current partnership and from other European Union countries.

3.2 Operational objectives in the long term:
The objective at the end of the project is that each country of the partnership can present at the university training level as at the continuous training the training modules to Accessibility for all intended for the decision makers and for the originators of architectural and urban spaces and that these modules can be accessible to all by various media (Internet, Intranet and CD-Rom).
Given that today there are only dispersed and discontinuous elements, the consistency of the teaching aids on the one hand and the cover of the field of the actors on the other hand will be a very important projection in the taking into account of Accessibility for all by those who decide it, finance it and conceive it.

——————————
For more information, please visit the official website of the project: www.dfa-archi-urban.org