Universal Design
UNIVERSAL DESIGN is when you create something new in the world, you think about all of the people who can use it, not just people who are walking, people who can hear, people who can see you really need to be more thoughtful so that the design, first of all, is functional, and then of course, it's very attractive and beautiful. So, universal design is the design of spaces so that everybody can use them, but they're adaptable the with least amount of effort.
Edited Transcript
Marsh Naidoo (00:36):
Welcome to this episode of the Raising Kellan podcast. My name is Marsh Naidoo, and I blog at www.raisingkellen.org where we curate resources for parents raising children with developmental delays and disabilities. As always, remember, the content provided on this podcast is purely informational, and if you seek advice for your specific situation, to always contact a trained professional. This episode is brought to you by Rebecca Renfro of Move Up Physical Therapy in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Rebecca, thank you for your sponsorship. If you would like to support the work that we do with the podcast, please contact us@raisingkillengmail.com. In today's episode of the Raising Kellan Podcast, episode number 87, I chat with Colleen Starkloff. Since I've spoke to her the last time on episode #66, Colleen has indeed retired from the Stark Disability Institute. So grab that cup of coffee, put your feet up, and get ready for some awesome conversation.
Marsh Naidoo (02:08):
Colleen, thank you so much for joining us today. The last time we spoke on episode 66, and that might have been about a year ago we talked about the work that's been done at the Stark Disability Institute. Yes, that was a really, impactful talk to me, just learning about your and Max's experience within the context of the disability movement and looking at how things had changed.
Colleen Starkloff (02:44):
Thank you, Marsh I really do appreciate this opportunity. I started doing a podcast, but I'm retired now and I can't do it without an engineer. So it's a real opportunity and an honor to be able to talk to people who care about the issues that face people with disabilities and the rights of people with disabilities so that we get to exchange information about it and get it circulated. So, I appreciate this very much. Thank you.
Marsh Naidoo (03:13):
Colleen, I wanted to touch back specifically with regard to universal design mm-hmm. <Affirmative> What does the term universal design mean to you, Colleen?
Colleen Starkloff (03:29):
Well, there's a definition for it, but basically what it means is that you design spaces and places and transit systems and public rights of way. When you create something new in the world, you think about all of the people who can use it, not just people who are walking, people who can hear, people who can see you really need to be more thoughtful so that the design, first of all, is functional, and then of course, it's very attractive and beautiful. So, universal design is the design of spaces so that everybody can use them, but they're adaptable the with least amount of effort. And that's not the dictionary definition of it but for example, I just did a kitchen. Okay, and I made it universal, but if you walked into my kitchen, you would not know that somebody in a wheelchair or somebody who has low vision could use my kitchen.
(04:46):
But it's all done with different colors. It's all done. I have an oven that's mounted at a height, so you can pull underneath it in a wheelchair in the door. The oven door drops down over your armrest on your wheelchair, and the bottom rack is on rollers. So it comes out easily as opposed to even 10 years ago when we didn't really have roller racks. And so it would be harder to pull hot food out towards you. I have a microwave that's mounted below one of the ovens. I have two ovens. One is underneath the counter and one is raised up, so you could pull underneath it in a wheelchair. Matter of fact, I just put some cookies in that one that's raised up for my neighbor, who's been really nice, and I wanna give them some cookies.
(05:41):
And so it's convenient for people who are standing or seated. My colors are black and white, but the countertop is kind of a marbled gray and white. The counter cabinets are black. The floor is a light brown wood, so when you use different colors, it's very helpful for people with low vision. It just kind of guides people to where things are. I have a raised dishwasher right next to one of my sinks so that a standing person doesn't have to lean over all the time to load a dishwasher. Somebody sitting in a wheelchair can easily load a dishwasher if it's right next to their sink, rinse the dishes, and a dishwasher that's under the counter. But for people like me who I have a broken back from when my horse threw me some years ago bending over is something that I should try to avoid to not aggravate that the fractures healed.
(06:48):
It happened many years ago, but I can get with a lot of bending, and et a lot of fatigue in my back. So levered handles I have pop-up electric outlets in the countertop. There's also a video that the builder, my builder, is a man who designs homes for disabled veteran she does it for the Gary Sinise Foundation, which is focused on veterans with disabilities. But his wife is an interior designer. And so even though I had an architect design it, and the architect did a fabulous job, there were a few little tweaks that the designer was able to help me make that I think made it even more universal. So I can send some pictures that people could reference. There's an hour-long video that I did with the builder and his wife, and that may be too long to post, but I can post a link to it in case anybody just wants to hear us talking about what we did and why we did it.
Marsh Naidoo (07:57):
I tell you, Colleen, that this is the overwhelming part when you start to think about universal design in a home that's already built. That's why I think it's easier doing this from the ground up as versus retrofitting a home. The issue we are now having is that we are actually on a crawl space. However, we do have cement steps that lead from a foundation slab in the garage into the home. And yes, the access of those stairs is actually what is in limiting Kellan from entering and exiting the home by himself, which I don't want. I want him to be able to navigate that independently, but there is so much to it, and there is a bit of overwhelm if I might add the concept of how retrofitting a home does become complicated, especially for parents at the beginning, that may not necessarily know the trajectory of their child's disability or what levels of support might be needed as they near their teenage years or beyond. So I would love, in other words, I would love to watch that video because that would kind of be helpful to me. And, and I think the, the element of having something look beautiful, yeah, that might be medical, but still look beautiful, is also very appealing.
Colleen Starkloff (09:39):
So couple of responses to that Marsh. One is that I had lunch just the other day with a colleague of mine who used to serve on our board, and he and his wife are gonna build a very high-end home. They've got the lot, they're gonna take down the house that's there, and they're gonna build a new home. And I said, oh, this is a great chance for you to make it universally designed. He said, you know, my wife doesn't want that. And I said, what? And I know right away what people think when you talk about universal design, and if you even mention that it's beneficial to people with disabilities, they go, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I, I don't want that because it smacks of grab bars in every room space in your kitchen where you can't pull underneath a countertop at all.
(10:30):
It doesn't look normal, a word that we don't like to apply to disability or any aspect of disability. Yes. But in fact, when you think about it, all of us as we age what used to be normal when we were children, and then in our twenties, thirties and forties and fifties changes when we enter our sixties, seventies, and eighties, and we have a better chance of living longer right now. And, but people don't embrace the idea that a disability could occur to them, and they don't wanna think about going to a nursing home, but they don't have a proactive plan so they can remain in their own home. So to your comment, I think most families will be faced with the idea of retrofitting an existing home. A lot to families with children with disabilities, and a lot of times you'll have one or two kids, but it's not until that third kid has a disability that you go, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do?
(11:30):
And it depends on what the disability is, but that's when people start to worry. And like you're saying, what happens when they're teenagers? What happens? How long does our child stay at home? I can tell you that most of the housing, and I can't remember the statistics right now, but most of the housing in the United States would not accommodate somebody like Kellan. It wouldn't. So you're going to have to do something different. Or if a child is born blind, you're gonna have to do something different. And not as much for a blind child as, say a child with low vision and more for a child with some type of a mobility disability mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But it's not gonna be easy to go out into the marketplace and say, well, we'll sell this house and we'll buy another one that's more accessible to the needs of our child.
(12:25):
No, you won't, because it may not, it's more likely not to exist in the neighborhood that you like. I am more likely not to exist within the vicinity of where you are. And so there are realtors who are beginning to add accessibility features into the mult-list So when they list a house, if it has a ramp or it has an elevator, or it has wider bathrooms, or it has a kitchen that's been modified, they'll start to put that stuff in that's happening right now. That's very helpful information, but you are not going to find it enmasse. So most of the parents need to really, well, I think, promote universal design because it's designed that, that adapts. So like I said let, I'll give you another example. In my kitchen, right? I have a cooktop that's induction.
(13:26):
I have a sink in my kitchen, and then right around the corner. I have an island space with a buffet, and underneath the two sinks and the cooktop, you wouldn't know it by just coming into my kitchen, but the doors will come off the cabinets very easily. They snap off strong, sturdy hardware, but they snap off and you can pull out the bottom of the cabinet and lift off the, kick the toe, kick and pull right underneath there. And what you do, people say, well, what are you gonna do with the pots and pans? You create a pantry and you put them there, and then you get the pots and pans that you need, or you design your kitchen in the first place to have additional storage adjacent to your cooktop, or your sink for the things that you wanna have close by there.
(14:19):
So, but you know, if you look at the video and I'll send you a link. Yes. If you click on the link, you'll see photographs of my kitchen, and you'll see a robust conversation between the builder, designer and myself about why we did things and what features we put into the kitchen. And then the video goes back and forth referencing those features. But I have a friend who well, my husband, I wish my husband was still alive when, when we had the money to, for me to modify this kitchen. But unfortunately, he didn't live that long, but our house was very accessible to him. We have an elevator that goes from the basement to the third floor, andMax could pull underneath a space. He didn't cook. I was the cook <laugh>. We have a step of entrance in from the backyard and a pathway from the front of the house to the back so that he could wheel back to the backyard and come up through the back door into our family room, which is adjacent to our kitchen, which is a, which is where we spend most of our time in this house.
(15:32):
But he could also get in the kitchenI mean in the living room, in the dining room. So those spaces are already accessible with the floor plan, the existing floor plan of the house. But it's really important, I think, for people to think of modifications that they're going to make. Like if, if you are worried about your garage, is there space to expand your garage? A good architect or a builder who can think outside the box can help you and your husband. And let Kellan get in on thinking about how to do this. And can you add on, add an addition in the back of your house? Can you add another floor? I don't know if you have a two-story house or a one-story house, but there are ways to do this, and there are ways to make it very attractive.
(16:26):
And I'll tell you what some parents do. Okay? Some parents will add on a sort of en suite or a, you know, like a mother-in-law's suite or whatever for their child, and that becomes a master bedroom on the first floor for their child. And the parents go upstairs if they don't have a disability. But a lot of them think about leaving their house to their child. There are pros and cons to that. One is, does your child really wanna stay there and live there for the rest of his life? And you guys move out, or God forbid die, but we all do. Or if you do it very nicely and beautifully, if you do it universally, then whatever accessible features are there can be disguised or, you know, adapted back to. So it doesn't look like it's modified for somebody with a disability, and the house is very saleable to somebody who doesn't have a disability.
(17:32):
But then we have one more house on the market that's a, that goes into the multi-list, and it becomes listed as something that was accessible to somebody who has a mobility disability. So, you know, there are ways to do this, but you don't I've said this to parents, I know you want to leave your house to your child, but what if your child goes to college, gets married and moves to another town, or moves to another neighborhood, or gets a job at a company and finds housing nearby and creates their own house because they learned how to do it with you. So there are different ways to think about it, but you don't wanna tie your child or guilt your child into living in the house, because it's your idea. However, your child might really appreciate it and say, this is great.
(18:28):
So there's just when parents look at their kids, I hope they look at their kids as growing up and being independent and having a full enrich life for themselves, defining what independence looks like for them. And so, parents are the best progenitors of the idea that you will be independent of us someday. Another thing to think about with a house is if you have a live-in attendant for a son or daughter, you know, where are you gonna put that person? And that does happen. It does happen. Now, a lot of times parents assist their children until they're, you know, they go away to college and colleges, that's another point. Colleges are becoming very much more sort of independent playgrounds for kids who go away from school and they don't have mom or dad right there to a system. And they have to, they have to use their good brains to figure out how are they gonna manage. And they get vocational rehabilitation, which will pay for attendance in most states, and they can hire students to be their attendance. It gets them going to a full productive life. Yes. So all of these things, I mean, I'm kind of wandering here...
Marsh Naidoo (19:55):
No it's perfect! You kind of going through the continuum of care, so to speak. I love.
Colleen Starkloff (20:03):
When parents have a new baby and that baby has a disability, don't think, oh, the poor thing. Parents have gotta think, okay, what are the challenges my son or daughter is going to experience: attitudes is one of them, but those of us in the disability rights movement have begun to pick away at some of those attitudes by creating the necessary tools and equipment and environment so that a person with a disability can really grow. There are a few things that we haven't gotten done yet, and that's for another conversation with you. <Laugh>
Marsh Naidoo (20:46):
Colleen, I spoke to about a week ago, and his name is Pete Hixson they live in Woodstock, Georgia, and he and his wife they have a young daughter who a disability and she's currently going to Sheppards's College, which is a three-year program in Wisconsin where you career path along a horticulture course, a culinary course or a computer science certification. But what they've (Pete) come up with is this concept or model rather called Beyond Communities, which are condo-style apartments for younger adults, with disabilities with supervision. And he calls them a mixed residential unit within a close facility to an urban area so that these young adults are able to source work nearby live independently as well as interact within the community, whether it's walking or driving to a movie, going out to a restaurant, having connections within the community. So that was an interesting concept. I knew of the work that the Starkloff Disability Institute was doing in finding, or rather facilitating the connection between school and the workplace. I think the work that Pete is doing is more or less around making sure that there is that accommodation or those living facilities close by your workplace.
Colleen Starkloff (22:58):
So is this a congregate living community for children or young adults with intellectual disabilities?
Marsh Naidoo (23:09):
The way he explained it, it is for young adults that have completed college that wanna live by themselves. It kind of fills the gap between perhaps 25 and 50. I mean, it was just exciting knowing that we have parents, we have thoughts leaders that are, are thinking and problem-solving around you know, the workplace employment around issues- transportation and accommodation.
Colleen Starkloff (23:52):
So that has been going on for 60 or 70 years in this country. And it's often led by parents who are concerned about where their children are gonna live. One of the things that independent living centers are doing is trying to solve the issue of housing that is really adaptable to people with disabilities, which is why I got involved in Universal Design. The creator of Universal Design is an architect by the name of Ron Mace who lived in North Carolina. He grew up as a person with a disability, as a little kid with a disability who at Polio. And so he saw that the built environment was pretty hostile. I mean, he walked with, you know braces and crutches as a little kid, but he grew up to be an architect and he used a wheelchair. He used a power chair when Max and I met him in Washington.
(24:52):
We were having dinner with him one night. And I said, so Ron, you know, what, what, what do you, what are you working on? Because he created the accessibility code for the state of North Carolina. This is years ago. And it, it was so accessible that states all over the country began to adopt it cuz it was so good. It was also created by an architect who basically gets it because he grew up thinking that the world was pretty hostile to him. And it was back in the, well, I'm talking the seventies, sixties and seventies. And so Ron began to, as an architect, apply his talent to eliminating barriers. So he said, his answer to me was, well, I'm working on a concept called Universal Design. And he started talking to me about universal design and spaces that are adaptable and very easy for everybody from birth to old age.
(25:52):
And he was talking on and on and I stopped him. I said, wait a minute, Ron, what are you talking about? We've been working so hard just to pass accessibility codes. Now, this was in the early eighties. By this time he'd done a lot of work and Max and I met him in the early eighties when we were starting the Independent Living Movement. So we're having dinner with him. And I said, why are you, why are you walking away from accessibility? And he said, think about it, Colleen, what's accessible for one isn't necessarily accessible for all, for one thing, for another is he says, we paint ourselves into the corner if we create housing and all spaces that are just wheelchair accessible, for example, he said, we need to think of people with vision loss and hearing loss. And, you know, we need to think more broadly about who are disabled people and what are their changes.
(26:53):
What about people who age and they age into disability and they don't realize that their home will not work for them anymore because they won't be able to get up the front steps. After they had that stroke and they went to the hospital, they end up stuck in nursing homes and that's not where they want to be. So he said, we shoot ourselves in the foot if we don't think about everybody and how people's needs change across the lifespan. And I said, whoa, that's huge. But I began to really listen to 'em and every time we saw each other, we'd go to Washington a lot. We, those of us who were working in the movement came in to Washington several times a year to do policy work. But then we'd get together and have dinner or have meetings and we'd talk over ideas. And I was very eager to talk with him about universal design because it made sense.
(27:51):
Let's think about all of our needs, whether we have a disability now or not, because if we live long enough, you will, we will. I had cancer cancer just a year and a half. Well, it's two years ago now. And I thank God I had this house with an elevator and with I can go to the bedroom on the second floor and go to the bedroom on the third floor. And I have bathrooms there too. I could get in and out if I couldn't do the steps and for a while I could not do the steps. I had to come in the back way up the ramp. I couldn't walk. So there's a lot of reasons to do universal design Marsh, and there's information about it all over the internet. It's growing and thank God it is.
Marsh Naidoo (28:40):
Yes, ma'am. I have to hit on this one hotspot and that's the bathroom. What, what are your thoughts, <laugh>, because I know everyone wants to know about their Colleen, what, what would be your advice for designing your bathroom? What are the key points that you would look at?
Colleen Starkloff (28:59):
Actually, I have a bathroom upstairs that is, as we renovated it in this house in 1978, we, we started to do gut rehabs on this house. We bought a very old house and there's a large room that is a bathroom now. It was not a bathroom to begin with. We have a tub in there, an oversized tub. We have a toilet and we have a sink that it only has one sink, but it's a pull-under sink. What I would like to do, I'm just saving up my money so I can do it. I wanna take the tub out and put in a curbless shower, which means that you just wheel right in. There's no lip, no anything. You put in trench drains, which are underneath the floor. And there's, there's, you see grills on the floor that will collect the water from the shower.
(29:56):
You enclose it with glass or a curtain or whatever it is, your preference and your budget. But then you put the shower controls within the reach of somebody who's sitting in there. You can also have flip-down seats that you can mount on the wall. And you don't have to mount 'em on the wall right now. You can mount 'em later when you need to sit in the shower. But everybody can go into a curbless shower, somebody who's standing, somebody who's seated. If you have a hose long enough on your handheld shower, you can wash your dog in there. But you need a seven-foot hose. Six-Foot hoses don't usually get down low enough to wash the dog. You wanna know how I know. No, I, I <laugh>. But you can buy seven f-oot hoses in the hardware store and just screw 'em on yourself.
(30:48):
But you when you put in the drywall in your bathroom, cuz most bath, most bathrooms need a gut rehab. And most bathrooms in American homes are not very big. You could do in a small bathroom, you could take out the tub, which would give you more floor space. You can make it a curbless shower and you can tile the floor with these trench drains in there to catch the water. And you can use a curtain. And when you draw the curtain back, you have room to, to transfer onto the toilet. So you can make a little small bathroom bigger by taking out the tub, putting in a shower a,nd dividing it with a curtain. Because if you have a glass door, it takes up space, space when you open the door. But you can have a very long floor-length curtain that contains the water.
(31:41):
That's one way to do it in a very small bathroom if you just don't have the money or the funds to enlarge part of your house to make it bigger for a bathroom. There are a lot of ways to do this marsh. It just takes thinking outside the box and not confining yourself to saying, well, we have this small bathroom and it's so small, we can't even put a shower in here. Yeah, you can take that tub out and you have some floor space that you can use. And by hanging a curtain and putting in trench drains you can contain the water so it doesn't go all over the floor to your sink, into your hall <laugh>. Oh my, there, there are lots of ways to look at it. I want to put a curbless shower in my bathroom.
(32:29):
I'm trying to decide if I'll keep the wall between the shower and the toilet. Right now I have a little small wall between the tub and the toilet. You can move the toilet. That's not hard to do. It's a plumbing issue. Now, if you're gonna do a gut rehab on a bathroom, make it accessible. That's the time to think about where things get placed. Good architects and good builders and, and interior designers too, are doing, are starting to get very interested in this as our occupational therapist in making homes universally designed to better accommodate the needs of whoever's living there. Your sink doesn't have to be in a countertop. It doesn't have to be, it can be a pedestal sink. It can be a wall-hung sink. There are, there are lots of ways to get more floor space in the tiny bathrooms that most American homes have. It can become bigger if you take the tub out. And most homes have tubs in them. They have tub showers, so you've got a tub somewhere else for people who wanna get in the tub. So it's possible, it's highly possible.
Marsh Naidoo (33:45):
Another accessibility point is like
Colleen Starkloff (33:49):
Doorways
Marsh Naidoo (33:50):
Between rooms and what would you suggest in terms of the width of your door frames?
Colleen Starkloff (33:59):
It depends on how much space you have in the hallway to turn into the bedroom or out into the hallway. One of the things that have become very popular in the design world is barn doors, which hang on hardware and they slide back and forth and they slide very easily. I, when I redid my kitchen, I put a barn door across, I have a bathroom off the kitchen, then I put a barn door there and you can get hardware that you don't have to be, have to turn. There's long, there's all kinds of hardware you can put on it and it slides very easily opened and closed. That doesn't take up any space, but a couple of inches where it sticks out into the room. You can do double doors french doors instead of one door and have hinges on it. That'll allow the door to go completely back against the wall when you have a tight space.
(34:56):
28 inches and 30 inches is too narrow. You've gotta get bigger ones. Some people use pocket doors. It depends on whether or not you have the wall space to install a pocket door. They're not all that easy for people who don't have the dexterity to open and close. But even that can be managed with a little rope or a pool or something like that. But there are ways to make existing homes that were designed with 28-inch doors to into the bathroom bigger. But it does depend on coming in and out. Whether you have the floor space, you may need a four-foot wide door or a five-foot wide door. If you have a little skinny hallway outside the bathroom the space required to turn in a wheelchair. And that's the biggest issue is people in wheelchairs. People who walk around. Doesn't matter how skinny the door is, right? But for people in wheelchairs need mobility space, the turning space to get into and out of a bathroom and to move around inside it to have a turning space inside it. A five-foot turning space for somebody in a power chair is small. I recommend six feet if you can do it. A six-foot turning circle in a bathroom. Colleen, we never have enough time to talk <laugh>. Oh, call me up and we will talk again. I would love for that...
Marsh Naidoo (36:29):
Would. Guys, thank you for listening along on today's podcast. We sincerely appreciate it. If you could rate and review this podcast and share it with friends, we are super excited to be going to the Mega Disability Conference in Nashville, Tennessee next week on the 25th and 26th of May. So stay tuned for more details, as I'm sure we are going to meet some awesome folks to bring you some more informational content. As always, guys remember, get to the top of your mountain. This is Marsh Naidoo signing off.
