Universal Design: How "Inclusive Architecture" Benefits Businesses & People
Our podcast is hosted on Anchor
But you can listen in most places such as: Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Radio Republic.
Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic of The New York Times, wrote that the planning and designing of public and commercial spaces for accessibility and diversity shouldn’t be seen as a requirement, but instead, as an opportunity, both economic and creative. And he also emphasized that such a vision required a shift in mindset: Universal Design (UD).
With one in four American adults living with a disability, it’s hard to believe that only a handful of organizations and institutions have truly embraced the benefits of Universal Design, but for some reason, it is still largely misunderstood and rarely applied.
Did you know that universally designed spaces don't cost significantly more, are just as aesthetically pleasing, and lead to healthier, more inclusive, and productive environments for more people?
This program will change forever–and for the better–the way you look at commercial buildings, public spaces, and bathrooms.
Join Gustavo Serafini, host of the Enabled Disabled Podcast, and his guests, Jonathan White, Director of Design Consulting at the IDEA Center in SUNY Buffalo, and Julie Sawchuk, Accessibility Consultant, in a dynamic dialog about the big and small benefits that businesses–and the people in them–derive from UD.
In this conversation you will discover:
The main goals businesses usually have when designing their commercial spaces
How YOUR experience changes, and what you can expect, as a user of universally designed public or commercial spaces
What your future house, office building, school, library, government agencies, and shopping centers will look like when they are universally designed
And so much more!
Machine Transcription provided by Happyscribe
How Inclusive Architecture Benefits Businesses & People - powered by Happy Scribe
Welcome to the near public library because I am not a DJ, but what I am is a very happy person to be here. Hello everyone, and welcome to another webinar here at the New York Public library's business centre. Today we have a fantastic series for you. We are kicking off our Visibility series, where we're going to be talking about how creative entrepreneurs and nonprofits are changing the way we understand human potential. And we're celebrating here at the library. July as Disability Pride Month. So, as a way of bringing together just the wonderful way in which uniquely abled persons are doing and improving business, we have a series of webinars that we are putting together throughout the month for you so that you can join us. And today, again, like I said, is the first one. So, as I see you getting in, I am going to ask everyone to please just hold on for a second while I read to you.
Just a little blurb that our legal department always asks me to read for you as we're getting started. And that just right here. And it just says that the library uses Zoom for this programme, yet it does not own Zoom. Zoom has its own privacy policy that you can read on its own page, but Zoom also has closed captions if you need them. So simply go ahead and click on the CC button on your screen and you'll find that CC wherever you see your Zoom controls, whether at the top, at the bottom, or if you are in a smart device like a phone or an iPad, wherever those controls are, that's where you will find them. Also, to understand how you and the library use Zoom, please go ahead and read the library's privacy policy, especially the section that refers to third party library service providers. Also a friendly reminder that at the library programmes, everyone is welcome and respected. And so with that, let me just go ahead and introduce our moderator for today. His name is Gustavo Serafini and I have the absolute honour of calling him a dear friend. He is the host of the enabled Disabled Podcast, which is a podcast that was created for people with disabilities and their families, friends, clinicians and therapists to shift the narrative around disability.
And he has had great success because he speaks with his guests openly about what it means to have a disability as well. And this is very important as what it doesn't mean. And his platform helps dive deeply into how the guests have experienced disability, what it has taught them about themselves, life, others, and the tools or experiences that have helped them better navigate and adapt to the world, what they wish other people knew about them and what they're working on currently and how they would like to improve the world. And by sharing all these stories, gustavo hopes to influence thought leaders and companies so that they can empower people with a disability and the professionals who work with them. And if this were not enough, when he's not recording his podcast, gustavo is a very successful entrepreneur. He co founded Pure Audio Video along with his brother Marcelo in 2005. And they serve clients in South Florida, the Caribbean and the US who are looking for amazing, and I really mean incredible, home entertainment experiences. So, Gustavo, we are immensely lucky to have you here with you today. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you also to our guests whom you are about to introduce. So I will hand you the mic and the floor is all yours.
Thank you, helena, thank you so much for the generous introduction. I really appreciate it. And thank you to the New York Public Library for making this happen. It's just a wonderful opportunity to be here and we are thrilled and I am absolutely delighted to introduce two people that I have a tremendous amount of respect for and are thought leaders and experts in their field. Julie Saw Chuck is a best selling author, professional speaker. She is a designated Rick Hanson Foundation Accessibility Professional. One of the things that I learned from getting to know Julie and working with her is she is also a tremendous problem solver. So if you go and see her YouTube videos, you read her blog and her writing, she's literally going to different businesses all around Canada, wheeling in there and interviewing them live on YouTube and saying, look, this is a beautiful space, let's figure out how we can make it more accessible. What if you did this? Have you thought about doing this in your bathroom? Her book building better bathrooms is tremendous. So she's a phenomenal teacher, phenomenal speaker, and a great honour to be here. Jonathan White. Jonathan is the Director of Design Consulting at the Centre for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access at the University of Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning.
Jonathan is one of those rare human beings who has both a great sense of academic and what's going on at the forefront of all the research. And he also is a practitioner and he helps different businesses, homeowners cities all across the United States in making their spaces more accessible and implementing these great concepts of universal design that we're going to talk about today. So Jonathan and Julie welcome.
Hello and thank you. So fun to be here.
So we have read and seen maybe a lot of different information out there in the media, some people talk about universal design. You've heard people say accessible design or human centred design. So there's all these concepts that you may or may not be familiar with that are floating around on the Internet, and we are here to talk about universal design. Jonathan, I want to make sure that everybody's on the same page and that we have a solid framework for what universal design is. Can you take us through the definitions and the goals of universal design? Sure.
Thanks. So, yeah, there's a lot of different versions of what people think universal design is one distinction that I think is the most important. It is not the same thing as accessible design. It's not the same as accessibility. Accessibility is minimum compliance with codes and standards, whereas universal design is bigger than that. Now, sometimes we go by the term inclusive design. We think it's the same thing. It's about this concept. So our definition is that universal design is a process that enables and empowers a diverse population by improving human performance, health and wellness and social participation. In short, it makes life easier, healthier and friendlier for all people. And to accompany this definition, we've developed eight goals of universal design. And I'm going to share some images here with you now that help exemplify some of these goals. So, the first goal of universal design is body fit, making sure that a design accommodates a wide range of body sizes and abilities. And so this image was at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum water play area, where people of all sizes could dry off after water play. If you've ever taken a kid to someplace where they're playing with water, everybody gets a little wet.
And so we're not saying you need to put this in every bathroom, but what we're saying is you need to be thinking about different body sizes and abilities, because everybody has a different size. And if you're designing for the average, somebody might be average in one respect, but not the average in another. They might be average height, but not average weight. They might have an average length of their torso, but not average length of their arms, and so on. And so body fit is really about the study of anthropometry. The next goal is comfort, keeping the demand for the design within desirable limits of body function and perception. And so it's not just about fitting, but it's about being comfortable in doing so. This is a picture of the Herman Miller Aeron chair. It comes in three different sizes, but that has all sorts of additional adjustments within that for the arm height, the seat height, Seattle lumbar support and the height of that, probably a few others as well. The idea here, it's not just about making people feel like they're as comfortable as possible, but this could also help prevent repetitive stress injuries and that sort of thing as well, and make people want to come back to a space and I'll talk a little more about that later.
The next goal is awareness. Making sure that the design, your critical information for use, can be perceived easily. This is an example from a hotel in Tokyo where they have tactile guide strips on the floor because when you're in a wide open lobby, somebody has difficulty uses the cane to get around. Wide open spaces are difficult because there's no wall to follow. And so this provides a way to find their way to the reception desk, where they can ask for assistance in finding a room or whatever it is that they need. So this is about the science of perception, making sure that people can know the information they need to know. And so whether it's making sure that a fire exit is clearly labelled or like I said, making sure people know how to get out in an emergency or be able to find the information that they need, the next goal is understanding. Making sure that it's clear and intuitive, making sure the design is clear and intuitive. And so this example is from some of the newer subway cars in New York. Of course, this visual example would need to be accompanied by an audible solution.
But what's on the screen is a dynamic display that shows what the next stop is on the train, then the next ten stops all in a row, and that updates as the train moves along. And then not only does it show the stop name, but also the connections, the buses and other trains, and then it shows the stops towards the end of the line in the last stop. And so it's not just about if anybody has ever been on the New York subway before. They had this you had that big map with all the different coloured lines intersecting each other and trying to figure out your stop. There might be a sign that says inbound or outbound or labelled with just the last stop on the train. And you might know that I want to go to Manhattan or I want to go to this particular stop and not know. Is that north of here? Is that south of here? You don't know what the last stop on that line is necessarily, unless you're from there. And so this is a great way of making sure that people understand the system a lot better. Another example, this could be Faucets that are intuitive and easy to use.
Sometimes Faucets got just one lever and I've seen two kitchen sinks. You put them next to the get the same lever and while to pull forward is hot or backwards is cold, and then out to the right is on and off, and then the other one will be opposite. So this really goes hand in hand with the last goal of perception. This is about cognition. So it's not just about seeing what needs to be seen or hearing or perceiving what needs to be perceived, but it's about them understanding what to do with that information. So those first four are all about the human performance, the improving human performance part of the definition. The next one is about mess. Again, another example from New York City, where they're transforming streets. So this is about protection from hazards. Safety. Protection from hazards, avoidance of disease, avoidance of hazards. In this case, in the road here, making it safer for pedestrians, but also making it safer for alternate transportation. So you can actually get exercise, or maybe choose to walk or bike or rollerblade in this case, and help prevent disability, prevent things that happen just naturally. As humans get older, sometimes people's knees start to hurt, or other things.
And just generally as a society, we don't get as much exercise as we should, because a lot of people work in an office or sitting, sitting down all day, they say sitting as they're smoking, right? And they can cause issues. So getting people out and active and making sure people stay active and lead active lives, then moving on to the social participation improvement area of the goal is social integration, making sure that all groups of people are treated with dignity and respect that we're not segregating different people into. This housing is for senior citizens and this housing is for college students. And this is for low income over here, and this is for upper income here. Having a good diverse mix of people in a neighbourhood helps make sure that the neighbourhood can work well for everybody, because everybody's got different needs and interests. This is an example in Malmos, Sweden, of a housing complex that does just that. It's got shops down below, it has apartments above, has social services in some of these storefronts, and so people can get to what they need within close proximity. They don't need to own a car necessarily, because they live in an area that's only housing, and it's only for this income they have to drive to get someplace.
And it provides a nice gathering space for people of all ages and abilities to come out and gather. The next goal is personalization, providing opportunities for choice and the expression of individual preferences. A great example from the product design realm is the iPhone, or really any smartphone nowadays. But the iPhone pioneered this, taking what was used by a lot of times younger people, the cell phone. People were texting on their flip phones with those little buttons and pressing the button three times to get a certain letter. And you could get on the internet on those phones, but it wasn't very easy to use. And then Apple came up with this idea based on the bento box where you got this app store, and you can choose which apps are on your phone and move them around and find what you need and let other people put apps on your phone. So now the phone could be used for camera or for music shortcomings, or whatever else people need to do with it for work or for fun. And lastly, cultural appropriateness is the last goal, making sure that the design respects and reinforces the cultural and contextual values.
This example is a HIPAA water carrier in this particular village. Women in the village were responsible for going to the supply of water, but it was far away and they had five gallon buckets. It was a low resource community. They had these five gallon buckets. They would go and have to carry water. And so that was pretty labour intensive. But it also meant that younger women and older women might not be able to actually do the task anymore. And so this idea is invented where they put the water right in this drum and they attach this to it and they could pull it behind them. Right. So universal design might mean something different in different places, in some place where accessibility laws, the Ada, doesn't exist. This is universal design. It brings healthy water back and helps all people feel like they're part of the community, regardless of age, and it solves a needed problem. Grab bars next to the toilet and the distance from the toilet are the less important issue for them. So, again, universal design, it's not about accessibility. It's about the process of improving, always improving human performance, health and wellness and social participation.
Two last images I want to show here before I toss it back to you. Costavo so this is an image. Now, it looks like these are out of order. I gave it away. This is the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. And they had this quiet, reflective space, but notice it's accessed by stairs. And they installed this lift so that everybody could access the space. So this provides access, it provides a minimum level of access. And assuming that this lift meets the code requirements, perhaps legal access as well. But the lift makes a lot of noise stigmatising. It doesn't look very nice in the space, to be honest. This is accessible design, but it's not universal design. Universal design would treat all groups equally. They would have designed the space entirely differently for this space. So I think this picture helps drive that point home. And that's what I have for now.
I love that you showed those last two pictures, Jonathan, because that's a great point of if you had designed that space with universal design, the lift would have been incorporated, but it would have fit into the architecture and into the whole construction much, much better and more seamlessly, so that it doesn't stand out, as this is for people who are wheelchair users. Right. So julie or it wouldn't have been there at all. Or it wouldn't have been there at all. Right.
You would have had no steps or some other way of getting down right now.
Right, perfect. And I think there's a bunch of different takeaways here. But when I first learned about universal design, for me it was not only is this great for architecture, for spaces, but this is a great tool for designing products, designing software, designing clothes, all sorts of things. My question for Julie is, when you first explain to people you're going to a new business owner and you're going in and you're explaining universal design, what are the typical reactions that you have seen from people that you're introducing this concept to?
Honestly, the very first thing that people want to know is how much it's going to cost. And that always seems to be the stopping point. This is going to cost me more money. And I try to dial that back. Right, let's not even talk about what we're going to do. Let's talk about why we want to do things differently from a universal perspective. Now, Jonathan, that was amazing recap for me to have a much more clear picture of universal design versus accessibility, especially in those last two photos. And when I do that dial back of the why are we doing this? And I talk about making a space work for everybody and making your service work for everybody, and I introduce numbers like 20% of the Canadian population identifying as having a disability and needing things to be done differently than we have been traditionally doing them in terms of our built spaces. Then they start to think. And honestly, another honesty is a lot of the people that I work with already recognise that they need to do things differently. And so there's not a whole lot of convincing that I have to do in my work, because a lot of the people that I work with already know that they need to do things differently and they just want to know where to start.
And that's super refreshing. Because when you come up against people who don't get it. It's hard to get them to see that there is a whole bunch of people that they aren't able to feed in their restaurant because they have all high cup tables or they've got steps up to their bathrooms and they haven't designed the space so that all features can be used by all people. And, yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's my beginning rambling. Oh, see, I got bathrooms in there the very first time I started speaking. Are you guys surprised by that? No, I was wondering how long it was going to take me.
But, I mean, that's a great so there's two really interesting things. There is. Most of the people that you're talking to thankfully already get it or feel the need for it, but I like that you come back and you start with the why, right? So even for people who don't get it, starting with the why hopefully broadens their perspective and shows them, look, there's a wider world of people out here that you're not serving that you could be. And at least in a new construction or a more substantial renovation, these things are very possible to accomplish when you are looking at budgets. And this is a question for both you and Jonathan when you're both looking at budgets, because I think it's important to talk about this. We'll talk about budgets and aesthetics when you look at budgets from the beginning, right. How do you approach the budget conversation as it relates to designing a space using a universal design principle?
From the beginning? I think Jonathan is the person to answer that question after the fact. I just wrote a case study about a little renovation in a bathroom in our local public library, and, well, there's two examples. One's at a church, one's at a library. The library installed an outsized change table and all in the renovation was like $12,000. So that's a good chunk of money, but it's still doable. The church renovation was much less expensive and only cost $2,000. And now I'm talking from an accessibility perspective here, not from a universal design perspective, but there's a massive range and there's a lot of research happening with the CMHC. So the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation in Canada here, where they can see that improving accessibility within a space and using universal design principles doesn't increase the cost of a new construction more than 1%. So you have to do all of these things to make all users able to access everything within a space and benefit from it and all of that. And it really is, it's just a flip of the mind to think outside the box that's I jonathan, am I on point saying that universal design is a think outside the box kind of thing, right?
Yeah. And to think outside the box, there's the client side and then there's the design side. Right. The designers are working for the clients, right. And they assume the client wants to spend as little as possible, but they also want a good design. And so it's cheaper even for the architecture, easier for the architect to just reuse the same designs or templates over and over, then to think outside the box. Or they're working there and they've got a certain deadline and they got to meet the deadline and get it done in a certain amount of time. They don't have time to research all this unless they have buy in from the higher ups and the firm or design firm to say, no, go ahead and come up with a custom thing for these guys. That's the directive from the client as well. But I think you're 100% on in terms of thinking outside the box. And it's really not so much about cost, because like you said, that's the first question people ask, what will it cost? But we always say it's the wrong question because the answer is always going to be, well, you get what you pay for.
The more important question is one of value with the economic benefit of adopting universal design? Cost is important because projects have a budget, but there's priorities in every project as well. Not all of the client goals, user needs or design elements have the same importance or quality, and it's all contextual. So these judgments of value, what do we value as a company, as an organisation, as a design firm, what do we value? Let me share another image here. So this is an Olympic venue that's no longer being used on television. These cities have designed these Olympic venues and I spent a tonne of money on them. And then I said, this used after the Olympics leave. And I'm sure there are examples in a lot of different cities, too. There's one in here in Buffalo. We're going to spend $100 million on a new football stadium of state taxpayer money, right? These are examples where a lot of public money is being spent with at least questionable economic returns to the community. But they say, well, the public is valuing these things, or at least the elected politicians value them or think the public values them.
And so they say, okay, we'll spend this money on that. And so, like you said, accessibility fee just cost under 1% of all new construction. And while universal design can add to that because they're not mandated by law, you get to choose which features of universal design you're going to implement that have higher value for the owner and users. And you can choose solutions that give a lot of bang for the buck and support other non universal design goals of the client and the end users. Look at, for example, a grocery store. Nobody questions having automatic doors in a grocery store, right? That's a universal design. It's not required by law. You can have pulled doors, even those push buttons, a lot of people think those are Ada required in the US. And they're not. But nobody questions them at grocery store because they benefit everyone and there's direct economic benefits. They reduce the congestion at the entrances and reduce the need for staff to help customers reduce accidents. You can quantify all of this, but other times it's not so easy to quantify. You've got difficult decisions to make without good information. Here's the other version that you might see.
One of the examples I like to give is of a transit station. This is the new one in New York. I haven't been here since they actually finished. It was on a construction when I last went there. So I don't know how good, from universal design perspective, not having been there. But a design team is making decisions about resources. What's the best investment? Can we increase levels of comfort and security? Maybe this more iconic form in the case of this image here, but having more comfort, more security. These universal design goals produce something what we call social capital. It can lead to increased ridership, increased revenue, greater support for future investments in public transit by showing that the agency cares about the user's experience. And this is often gets overlooked by both clients and designers when establishing his priorities. So it's important for going into to establish these are our priorities, these are our values, and not overlook this social capital thing and not just look at the cost. I should also point out, too, that what I just said is it's a logical fallacy called a false choice, saying, oh, well, you can have this iconic form, or comfort and security.
Well, no, you could do both. A creative design team can do both. Can do both. It doesn't necessarily have to increase cost. Universal design can be more expensive, but can also be done in the same budget. So rather than talking about this, we're adding universal design. This is a new feature we're going to add to this. It's better to talk about having a good balance of priorities, increasing the value over the long term, and increasing investment in the social capital. And again, since there's no law that mandates that you have a choice of what to include, I can go on, but I'll let you jump.
No, I think I love what you both said, and I want to build on that. And I think that the additional.
Issue.
Is one of awareness. That the part of the big reason why we're having this discussion today and why we've done this kind of thing before in other venues is so many people still haven't even heard of what universal design is. So the more people are aware of it, it's the foundational principle of how you design a space. The more opportunity there is to contact experts around the country and around the world like you both to say, can you help me with this project? I just heard about this. This is amazing. I didn't even know it existed. So that's one of the big reasons why we're here today, is that sense of awareness. So my hope, and I think you both would agree with me, is the more people hear about it, the less resistance there's going to be to it, because they're actually going to understand the why.
Absolutely. And it's a fear, right, this not understanding and not knowing what you don't know and not even knowing where to start. Right. I mean, it applies to so much of what we do in our day to day lives. When you aren't sure, you don't even know where to start, right, and what questions to ask. I'm looking at the photos that I have chosen for today, and I wanted to start with this one. No, not that one, this one. Because I want to show my ideas of universal design in application and also what is not universal design. So this is an example of what is universal design. This is a great, accessible, wonderful. Hotel that I've stayed at in Ottawa. And I love how it's welcoming to everybody, whether you're standing or seated. And it's no, like, special little around the corner low service counter where somebody who seated has to go around and be segregated from everybody else who's checking in, and the staff are also able to stand or sit, right? It works for everybody. And then I wanted to show you this example. This is at an airport while you're waiting for your flight kind of place.
And with the very first time I saw this, I was like, oh, cool. Like a low height service counter. And then I was like, no, wait a second. I don't like this at all. From a universal design perspective, why didn't they just make it all lower height, where everybody could sit in a lower seat? And these giant blue wheelchair symbols on these chairs, it just makes me shake my head. I have no other words for it. It just makes me shake my head. And the funny thing is, there's two chairs where they're supposed to be like wheelchair seating, and those chairs weigh like, £100. And I couldn't even move the chair out of the way in order to roll into that space. So I had to get my friend to move that chair. So from an example of what is universal design to what is not universal design, there's just some examples from the places where I end up taking lots of pictures. What works, what doesn't work.
I want to shift back, too. And thank you for showing those, Julie. I think the whole idea of that universal design principle is so that it's not a separation. It's included as part of the whole thing, right? And if we look at the picture that Jonathan showed earlier of the chair, right, the adjustable chair, the adjustable office chair, instead of having high tops or low tops, they could design something where the seats can go up and down. People can adjust to their comfort levels. Maybe even the countertops can be adjusted, too. That whole idea of different body fits for different people is really powerful hijacking.
Because that's exactly the slide that I skipped over. That's exactly what this is. So when I put in this photo, I wanted to show you this particular product, which is the podium that I'm sitting behind. And this podium is height adjustable. So Samantha and I are here doing this presentation in Ottawa International Airport. Hence the big Canadian flags and celebration and everything. But this podium meant that I could actually be seated behind the podium, have my notes on the podium, and see the audience. And I didn't just have to put the notes in my lap and be beside the podium, which is what would happen with a standard height podium. And it meant that this podium could then come up to Samantha site and she could put her iPad on it as well. So that whole adjustability. It works for everybody. There's just another happened to have it in my presentation.
Yeah, that's a great photo. And that really the notion. Jonathan, I'd love for you to take us through a little bit more of the value propositions and different case studies for universal design. But I think that whole we talked about flipping of the mindset is we've been trained and we've been used to adapting to our environments. Right, our environments. We think of these rooms and this furniture and these spaces as kind of static things and we're adapting to them. So we're going to get a cushion to make a sofa feel more comfortable or we're going to adjust the height of a toilet seat, et cetera. We have the power, the products exist now. The solutions are there where we can make our environment more adaptable to us and to a wider group of people.
Yeah, because when you don't use universal design, you have to go the route of accessibility. Right. When we don't design things with everybody and all needs incorporated into the plan, then we have to do these makeshift things like toilet seat lifts or whatever. Right. That's a really good way of looking at it.
It's not really a great design either, as we saw in the example at the beginning. Just having this lift added on, that doesn't look great either. And so I think a lot of people, when they conflate the two, they see that and they think that's what we're talking about. Like, oh, we're going to make it. It's about wheelchair users, or something like that. And we're going to have these ugly lifts everywhere, or something like that. These big blue ugly stickers, these big blue ugly stickers. And I think, oh, this would be terrible. And so that's the mindset we need to get away from is that it's not about these blue stickers everywhere. And really in good design, you don't actually even see it. A good example is like whether you're pushing or pulling on a door. Everybody's had that experience where they walk out the door and they think they're supposed to push and they pull or something like that. Right. Well, a good design affordance you wouldn't even make that mistake. You wouldn't even notice that the door had a problem because you would see based on it as a push play or it's a pull handle and you would know what you're supposed to do at that door.
So good design sort of goes unnoticed. It just comes naturally that you don't notice what you have to do to use it just works. And so that's what's also tough to point that out to folks. I think it's an easier thing to point out to left handed people because it just works for right handed users. You open that tape measure and the numbers are all the right way. And if you're left handed, the numbers are all upside down and it's an issue, but for a right hand person, you just don't notice. So a good design, you wouldn't notice it either way. The numbers would be in both directions, no matter what, no matter how you open it. Yeah.
And I think that also highlights the second objection that we often get with universal design, which is it's going to look ugly or it's going to look institutional. And again, the aesthetic is all about how well you design it. But there are plenty of products out there today that didn't exist 20 years ago that fit the need for the accessibility and look really good, and good design can keep it still looking beautiful. I mean, Julie, I highly recommend people go cheque out your videos because you have great videos and pictures of your house, which is universally designed from your kitchen to your bathroom, and you look at those places and you wouldn't know that there is you talk about your husband being six foot three and you're a wheelchair user and it's a comfortable, wonderful place for both of you.
Yes, and I have another example to share. That's one of my favourite projects, and this is a restaurant and a brewery just down the road from me. And the owners, when they built this building six years ago, they had an architect who was very universally designed minded in the construction. And there's a lot going here at the entrance of this building, it's got big pillars and a crosswalk that comes from the accessible parking with a tactile indicator and onto the sidewalk to the front door. But there's some other things as well that you don't see well, you can actually see the little fountain as a queue for you're coming to the main entrance if you have a visual impairment. And the other thing that you don't see is the heated sidewalk. And up here, not in Florida, where we have snow a good many months of the year, that is a helpful thing, not just from a safety perspective. It means that I don't track so much snow into the restaurant. And it is helpful to the staff, because then they have to exert less effort in constantly going out and clearing snow and making sure that it's safe.
Just some more examples, but it doesn't.
Have to look, yeah, let me go ahead and jump in there, because I was going to actually use the same example of this is the heated pavement awesome? Because this ties into cost as well. As you said, you don't have to get a team out there to shovel the whole thing, but there's more to it than that as well. You can quantify that because you can say, well, what's the hourly wage of the people doing the shovelling or snowballing or whatever it is? But there's lots of other things as well. What's the cost of people slipping and falling and suing because you didn't shovel fast enough? I could make the same argument going back to New York City subway, because I know we had some questions talking about that a little bit, too, but having those doors at the transit platforms, which is, by the way, easier said than done, but still something like that, okay, well, how much do these doors cost? How many people go over the tracks, either intentionally or unintentionally? And then how much money does the city pay out for that? And then emergency services and all that, and maybe somebody leaves a family behind and now that family has to go on public assistance and there's all these other costs that could be associated with it, too.
But going back to the heated pavement, there was a study done where there was this transit platform. I don't know if I've got a picture of that. There's the people shovelling snow, but there was a transit platform and they looked at the shovelling and all that, but some of the other things that they didn't think about was, okay, the salt, how much salt do we have to put out? And the environmental impact of the salt. And maybe you did think of the salt. You're thinking, okay, the salt, we got to factor that in, that cost and we're going to get that cost savings, too. But guess what? The salt also pitched the concrete and chips away the concrete and now you've got holes popping out. So you're reducing the lifespan of the structure a little more difficult to quantify. So this structure, how often is this cracker going to have to be repaired? How long will the structure last before we build a new one? Tougher to say. It really depends. Maybe they're using way too much salt like they do here at the university. Here where you're stepping out, just crunching under your feet.
So there's the environmental impact and then the impact of having to replace the concrete more often as well. And so do I have the cost? I've got the doors back to these.
And that's a great connection because my background is actually environmental science, and sustainability has always been something in my teaching. And now I'm able to connect accessibility, universal design and sustainability. Because when you put universal design out there like that, Jonathan, and talk about the sustainability from an environmental perspective, you can start getting people to realise that those two things do work really well together. And when you design and build something from a universal design perspective and do more than code, right, I talk about building beyond code or using better Practises or best Practises, you actually create more longevity in that structure because you've done forward thinking and you've looked at ways of doing things that mean it's going to last for more people for longer.
There's some questions coming in here, like one of them is about and I'm sure we'll get your questions at the end, but just to address one of these now, somebody's asking about disabilities that cannot be seen, and how universal design addresses that. A lot of our examples, a lot of times, unfortunately, unfortunately contributes to the conflation between this and accessibility. They deal with wheelchair users because they have perhaps the most pressing space requirements in terms of turning or in the bathroom or whatever. So that tends to be something that's more visible. But going back to those eight goals, when we talk about awareness and understanding, let's say somebody's colour blind, making sure that you're picking out colours that are high contrast for signage and that sort of thing, for example, people who have PTSD or Epilepsy, there's an issue about colour choice and being able to see your surroundings. So there's lots of other design as well. And again, if it's good, you're not going to notice it, right? But for the person who says, even the person who is colorblind might not notice that, oh, this sign has been specifically designed to make sure that I can read this.
They only notice they went, oh, I can't read that sign. Same thing, PTSD. They won't have anxiety or an episode, they'll just feel comfortable in the space, which is how most other people would feel as well. But you have to think of these things. And so when you're thinking of these eight goals, you have to think of all of these different groups and make sure that you're designing. It's not just about making sure something is visible, but visible to everybody. People with low vision, people from the expected distance. You need to view it from people who might be colorblind. Same thing. Comfort. It's not just about physical comfort, but feeling comfortable, feeling stay feeling secure. We talk about design of bathrooms and lots of times we talk about designing gender inclusive bathrooms. Well, there are some people who have trauma backgrounds where they might not feel safe. So how are we designing the bathroom to make everybody feel safe in bathrooms if we're going to segregate them, making sure the doors go all the way to the floor and you can't see through the cracks in it and all of that stuff, and making sure, and guess what?
Everybody likes that as well. Not just people who have trauma background. Everybody doesn't want people seeing through that little crack or being able to see under the door. And then you have to think of, well, what are the consequences of bringing the door to the floor? Well, there's a ventilation issue, notifying that it's occupied, because you can't see their feet under there. So having that little sign not vacant, or a light above the door where it's red or green. So there's lots of other considerations that we think about.
I mean, I think this really highlights and we're getting close to starting Q and A here, but this really highlights how important it is to choose the design professionals that you're working with. You, Jonathan and Julia, are just this wealth of knowledge you have the experience of thinking about these things that other people don't. And so it just highlights the importance of education and the importance of finding the people who can help you figure out what you don't know, so that you can go into a project as clear as possible about what your priorities are and who you're seeking to serve.
Yeah. And a lot of people, like design professionals, anybody who's working and trying to get your business is going to say, we know. A lot of people think they know, or they might think they know what universal value, but they're thinking about accessibility. Nobody wants to say that to the client, actually, I don't know what you're talking about. They want to get the job. So you have to say, well, there's experts, I want you to consult with an expert who knows this stuff. Prove to me that you know what this is. Show me an example of a project you've done where you've accommodated this. And when they start talking about, well, here we install this wonderful lift in the Holocaust, maybe you can say, Well, I don't know that that's what I'm talking about here. But if they start pulling out other examples and they say, well, actually, we did this hospital for the disability services organisation, and then here's all the great features we added and here's what we learned and we've got this project, maybe they do. Now, that's an important thing, getting the right people and making sure that they have them in and having buy in from whoever it's for.
Right. If they're not going to some organisations, some design firms have research arms, too, where they actually will survey the employees of the old building and say, well, what do you need in the new building? What are the things that you don't like about this space that you could have better in the new space?
Understanding the user. Absolutely.
Understanding the user. Yeah.
Holy that's just so very important. And Jonathan, I'm glad you brought up bathrooms again, because from a universal design perspective, that's a really great place to start, right? Like, who are using the bathrooms? What do they need so that they are comfortable and safe and something as straightforward as recent project that I've been working on is a new McDonald's restaurant, and they have the men's washroom and the women's washroom and then the accessible washroom. And I'm like, okay, let's think about this. Why do we need to have a man's washroom and a women's washroom? If they're single feeders, let's just make them not sexed washrooms. So they're anybody washrooms. They've got a toilet on the sign and this has a toilet and a wheelchair symbol on the side so that people know that this is the washroom that is a little bit bigger and accommodates somebody who's using a wheelchair or whatever, or has a family or whatever, and just that whole copy paste, right? We can't just keep copying and pasting, because the way we have done things in the past, have we not learned it doesn't always work and we need to rethink it.
So, yes, choosing the right person to help you, the right people, the right team. I love that idea of researching. Researching by talking to the people who are in the old building and what do they want to see in their new building? What are the deficiencies in their workspace that they see for their clients? Yes. Amazing.
There's a way you can actually save costs there, too. I mean, talking about the single user restrooms, like if you have a men's room and a women's room, guess what? They both need to be must be built excessively. Have to comply with the Ada here in the States. But if they're not gender segregated, then one of them doesn't actually have to be. By law, you only need 50% if they're clustered in the same area. And so you could actually get away with having less space and less space dedicated to the restroom. I'm not advocating for that. But there is a cost savings that you can have by doing something like that. It's the same thing with circulation space, right? You can usually make up for the space in some way. So if you had to increase the bathroom size here, and we say, you know what, from Universal Design, we want you to change that 60 inches to 67 or 72 inches. Oh, no, that's an extra foot. It's only extra foot in this bathroom. But maybe the other one doesn't need to have as much space anymore. You can still provide some grab bars, but it doesn't need the full we didn't show it claims anymore because legally can do that now.
So you can provide more space in one and less space than the other. So there are ways of making up for that or having a more efficient circulation plan. Not having these redundant circulation spaces that are all too narrow, have one wide space and rethink the plan that way.
I see that in houses a lot, too. People that are attempting to design accessible houses and they do all of these little passageways and I'm like, you can't, it's not going to work.
Plans are great for that sort of thing. Yeah, I see that all the time in housing. And you could take the same we've actually done the book I did ten years ago, twelve years ago now, Inclusive Housing, a pattern book, talks about housing and how we took a whole bunch of houses that were typical stock plans from developers and we redesigned them to be more inclusive. And we sometimes cut square footage from the home, keeping the same number of bathrooms, same number of bedrooms, which is having more efficient circulation layout and not having any fussy features. And that's where it comes back to the idea of priorities and value, right? Like this one Victorian house we had had this octagonal living room. It's tough to put furniture in, and it created these weird spaces and weird turns and weird corners. We squared the whole thing off and reduced the square footage of the home and it made it more usable while doing it. So, again, it's about value and priorities, what's important.
Right.
So I want to just do a very quick recap. There's so many takeaways to this, but I would like you both to add, let me know if I missed something. But I'm going to try to synthesise it into three huge takeaways. Right. The first one is that universal design makes spaces better for more people, more types of people, different abilities, et cetera. The second key takeaway is that cost and aesthetics are no longer constraints for whether you don't do universal design. And my third takeaway is find the experts in the field, educate yourselves, do the research, because what you don't know, you don't know. And it's important to cover those blind spots and find the people who are going to help you with that and bring clarity to what you really want to prioritise in your project. So have I missed anything there, Julia or Jonathan that you want to add?
The other thing I would add, just don't be afraid to ask questions that is so important in everything.
I would maybe just like to summarise the budget side of things a little bit more. I talked a lot about how important is this to the mission of the organisation or the values, but also, is it going to help reduce or contain operating costs? What's the long term costs and benefit? What's the social capital that would result from investment upfront? It's really easy. And sustainability I make it sound easy anyway, in sustainability, to say, well, you know what, these more expensive light bulbs or light fixtures, they're more expensive upfront, but here's how your energy reduced over time and you'll recoup the costs within six years. Unfortunately, with universal design, it's not so easy. And that's what I think scares some people, is how do you quantify that social capital? How do you quantify that somebody isn't going to sue you because they slip and fall and that risk costs, it's not as black and white to be able to quantify that. But are you asking those questions and are you asking them of the right people? And do you have the right people on board who can help you answer those questions?
Fantastic. Thank you. Helena, what's our first question?
Thank you. Well, Jonathan has already addressed the first one, which was, how does universal design account for disabilities? That cannot be seen. So thank you so much, Jonathan, for answering that. And the second one is for Julie. Can you please elaborate on the 1% cost increase?
That was a study done by HCMA, which is an architecture firm in Vancouver, and they were looking at an office building, so designing an office building to national building code here in Canada, code minimum versus to the Rick Hanson Foundation accessibility certified gold standard. And so that's obviously way better than code and looks at all sorts of things that code doesn't look at. And what the research found was office building to office building NBC code to RHFAC gold. The cost increase was 1%.
Wonderful. Thank you.
I would say it wouldn't even have to be that, right. If you saw that in planning, you could say, okay, well, maybe we can cut back and save money in other areas. I've been in buildings where they had the company's logo was on the elevator buttons. Right. Like that was a decision that was made. It's kind of cool. Right. But is it necessary? There's always little things like that that you can say, well, you could spend the money better elsewhere.
I think that's a perfect segue for our next question that comes from Ms. Hurley. They're talking about the pictures that we shared and she says there are a lot of pictures of public places and big businesses. But are there any ideas or pictures for small businesses or mom and pop shops that you have that you can share?
Yeah, I don't have any images off hand to share, but yeah, we do this all the time for smaller businesses as well. I think that the problem comes in where these larger companies tend to have this big infrastructure place. They have like diversity inclusion offices, right. And they have a person who's in charge of this and so they have some sort of initiative to go out. Whereas with the mom and pop yeah, it's sort of on you. If you're just the owner, it's just the two of you. It's just mom and pop. They have to do it themselves and go out and do it. But the same ideas that apply to these larger businesses can happen for smaller businesses. And actually it's easier if it's a smaller building wayfinding, becomes a lot easier. A lot of things become a lot easier. You don't have to have lots of different restrooms. Maybe there's not even an elevator anymore, so it's just one floor. So it can become easier at the smaller level. But it's so context specific that stuff to generalise. For a momandpop store, these big office buildings, it's easier to generalise because when I was a big office with a bunch of stuff in, it doesn't matter whether you're working for this company or that company is a big office with a bunch of desks and computers.
And so it's easier to generalise and talk about then among the pop business, if you're selling shoes versus your restaurant versus whatever, there's a lot of different considerations there. But we have a website called thisisut.com where we have a certification programme similar to the Rick Hansen programme, where if you sign up for a free account, you get a list of 500 solutions for universal design and you can pick and choose which solutions work for you based on the scale of your business. But it was designed to work for any size. You don't have to do everything on the list, you just do the ones that apply to your organisation based on the size.
I think that what you just said is fantastic because our audience is mainly small businesses, so I'm sure that they will find that really helpful. I just put on the chat. This is Ud.com. I just wanted to confirm that's. Correct.
Right.
This is Ud.com.
Fabulous. Thank you. All right. A lot of the little projects that.
I've worked on, just in my own small town here, we're a town of 1000 people, and so they are those mom and pop businesses right there. Small and trying to just figure out ways to make things better for everybody that's trying to come and use their services.
Absolutely. Cristovo, do you have anything to add to that? I saw, you know, then, so I'm.
A small business owner too. We have nine people now and our store is accessible, or I should say our showroom, and we are remodelling it. Now that I know so much more than I knew 15 years ago, we are going to be making it even better, more welcoming, have some more universal design principles in place. But I think the main thing is to remember that a good design professional, whether that's an architect, an interior designer, builder, they're problem solvers. And if they don't know, they should know where to find those answers. So there are solutions for all different kinds of spaces. It's just about how creative are the people that you're working with and can you find the right people to help you on that journey?
Absolutely. Thank you. Now, the next question comes from Leslie. She gives us a yes. Like an enthusiastic copy, paste has to die. From your perspective, what's the best way for an occupational therapist with an emphasis on environmental design to make themselves as marketable as possible to get hired for consulting?
Unfortunately, there's no certification programme aware of, but I do run an online training programme here at UB. Here's a different website for you. It's Udeducation.org, where we have online courses that you can pick and choose what you want to take. Some of them, you can just buy our textbook and just take the test, which you read it on your page and take the test, which is really meant for architects who just want the CEUs. They can read the textbook and answer the questions about the test, but then we also have ones that are more involved, where you've got videos in addition to the textbook, supplemental readings, projects that I will go in and answer. And so I would say take it. I wouldn't say we designed them initially for architects, but I would say half or a third to a half of the people taking them are. OT's or Pts. So particularly we have a course on home modifications, which is where we get a lot of interest. And so I would say just get knowledgeable in those areas so you can know what you're talking about. And we do give you this certificate, a little paper certificate that you can print off for each course you complete.
It's not like a degree or anything, but it's something that's one way, I.
Would say, spend time in spaces that are designed with universal design principles because they feel different than regularly design spaces. So if you can visit a home that has been designed from that perspective. You will be able to then translate that to your clients as they are asking questions about. Well. If I'm going to be losing my sight. How am I going to navigate in the kitchen. Or if I'm going to be using a wheelchair. How am I going to reach the taps. Those kinds of things. But when you see it and you feel it, you understand it.
Wonderful. Thank you so much for those great answers.
I just want to add a quick plug for Jonathan's classes. I've taken one, I really enjoyed it, learned a lot, so highly encourage people to do it. And hopefully, Jonathan, this maybe inspires University of Buffalo to create some new certifications and some new programmes.
Yeah, I hope so, if the process can get a certificate programme, especially when it's all online. But now, after the pandemic, a lot of things had moved online, so maybe that will become easier for us.
Yeah, I do live tours of my house all of the time and you get to travel around in my house with me and it's not the same as being here, but it's almost the same.
Wonderful. And if I may also encourage everyone who is here with us, gustavo has started a wonderful new community excuse me, I can't speak today enable disabled chat and it's a fantastic community. I'm going to ask my team to please just drop that link on the chat. Gustavo, would you like to talk about your community a little bit?
Yeah, so we just started this community and I think for people watching this, this is a great place to come and continue the conversation with Jonathan and Julie and some of the other panellists later this month to ask more questions. Let's learn together, engage and let's see, let's build something vibrant, something where we can share knowledge, where we can amplify each other's work and learn about the things that we want to know more about.
Definitely. Thank you. Okay, so we have a few more minutes and a couple more questions. Jonathan, really quick, can you give the name of the town in Sweden in the photo?
I believe it is Malmo. N-A-L-M-O. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly either, that if it's not that it's blue, but I think it's mali. Okay, my note under one of the images says Malibu, but I know I've gotten wrong in the past. Pretty sure it's not wrong.
Awesome. Now, when you were talking about that, there was a comment and another one of your photos, the one about the station where you said, well, I don't know how it is in New York, but somebody commented, it is very slippery when wet. And then you went on to talk about all this. So I just wanted to acknowledge that.
It did look like it could be it had a lot of glare on the floor, as I recall, but it also had big barricades and walls up, and so I couldn't really get a feel for it. But, yeah, the purpose of the example was to show that very iconic, we're spending a lot of money on this transit stop. And somebody else had mentioned, but other transit stops don't have bathrooms. Bathrooms, I would say, are more important than making it this grand gesture. How many of those little whale bones could have been removed to put bathrooms someplace in a different station somewhere? Right. So it's all about these values. Not saying it's not important to have I mean, this is the first stop. People come. They come down at World Trade Centre. Sure, it's important to have an iconic feature. I'm not saying it's bad to do that. I'm just saying you can choose your priorities.
Absolutely. All right, so on to our last question from Eve. Early in the presentation, the issue of cost was brought up as a primary concern to inclusive design. I think it's important to have tools and training to preemptively and responsibly address value over cost, including the fact that when we design for everyone, everyone benefits, for which I'm sure most inclusive or universal designers have uncountable examples. How do designers, architects and planners overcome stigma associated with inclusive design costs and disability, turning it into a unique selling proposition or a strength or value proposition, while focusing on the goals of the project at hand?
So I think this is where you have to tie the other goals of the project, whatever that is, with universal design goals, and say everybody wants a building that's comfortable, that promotes wellness or something like that, right? But let's say you're a YMCA and it's a fitness centre. It's all about wellness, so you can really lean into that. And so it's about combining your goals and making sure you're having that. In terms of the training, it's important. We now include this, the little bit that I gave you, and we've got a whole section. One of the courses on that education site now is on that. It goes into more detail and shows some more examples. Idea three one six is of course, it's got a lot more on that as well. And we now include that anytime we talk to both designers and especially clients. And we give what we call the business case for universal design. Going over all those things that we talked about here. But also about broadening the market social branding. Saying we're being socially responsible in terms of branding. Which is in with a lot of companies now these days.
You want to say. Oh. We're welcoming. We're being inclusive. Here's how we're doing that. And so you can sort of sell it that way. I wouldn't say cost is necessarily a stigma. I wouldn't use that phrase. But I would say that it is a hindrance in terms of getting people on board. And so you have to sort of educate both the client and the design team, because sometimes the clients just look at the design team to be the expert. So both sort of need to know, no, this can actually help you because it helps you save costs on this, right. If somebody's looking at doing something sustainable, the architecture firm might say, hey, why don't you use this? Because it'll save you money in the long run. They need to be able to do the same thing with universal design, so we try to provide that training to them.
My answer to that would be to make it personal. That works, right? When you talk to anybody, they will have somebody in their life that will benefit from universal design in a space or accessibility in a space. And when you point that out in a polite, non confrontational, loving kind of way, then it helps people change their perspective and their way of thinking. Yeah, I would want my uncle to be able to come on this trip with us and go to all of these places or come to this restaurant or get into that YMCA and work his tail off in a fit way that works for him, kind of thing, right. I'm a storyteller, and that's what I do in my stories is I make it personal and I make people see. I think I make people see how to just tweak things and think about everybody.
Yeah, that's great. You tell stories about your own family. I'll tell stories about my mother had a lung transplant and she ended up having to use a wheelchair for a while before she had the transplant. Or I'll talk about my daughter, who's six years old now, but trying to navigate the world with her and go on trips and potty training and all that. These are things that resonate with a lot of people. And so you can tell any number of stories about to make it personal and somebody's going to resonate. It will resonate with somebody.
Absolutely. Well, I want to thank all of you, but this has been absolutely fantastic. But do you have any parting pieces of knowledge that you want to leave us with? Gustavo, Julie, jonathan?
I'll go first. I have one thing in mind. And Julie, you did tell a beautiful story on the podcast the first time you were on the first of two, where two of your best friends, before you even came back from the hospital, had already built ramps in their homes because you were still Julie, you were still their friend and they wanted you to feel welcome in their home. So I think that's just to me, the question I ask is, if we can make things better, why aren't we? We have the tools, we have the technology, we have the expertise. So that's the question that you have to ask yourself, as a business owner, as a human being, as a leader of a corporation or an organisation, if we can make things better for more people, why aren't we?
And to build on that, it seems overwhelming if you are a business owner and you're like, I got to make my space better, pick one thing and do it, right? Jonathan said he has a list. Pick one thing off of Jonathan's list and do it. And it just gets you over it's. Like anything, right? Like exercising. Do one push up. Don't just start with 1000 push ups, right. Do one thing and it will help you see that it is possible. And sometimes it's, from an accessibility perspective, sometimes it's those low hanging fruits that are not super expensive and really do make a big difference. Yeah. So that would be my thing. Pick one thing, commit to it and do it.
Yeah. And it could be something easy, like you said. It could be signs or you start with something like that, or it could be something you want to fix anyway. Something that's been problematic or broken, you got to fix anyway. This counter got a wonky door on it and it's all busted. I got to put a new counter. I'm going to put in a red hate counter for this. Or maybe some people just update styles as time goes on. And you know what? My restaurant bathrooms are outdated. I'm going to redo them. Let me redo them. Right? So there's lots of ways of doing that, but yeah, and think about that value over the long term, what you can actually get from that down the line. We all do this just in our everyday life, trying to make sure that we're doing the right thing, but how can we make sure that we're increasing value? When people have a positive experience someplace, they come back, they want to come back. And that's really the biggest thing. And so you're always constantly thinking, how can I get people to come back and have a positive experience here?
Maybe sometimes that has to deal with the fundamentals of the business. Make sure the food tastes good or make sure it's got good service. But it could also be the place itself. It's warm, it's welcoming, it's inviting for everybody. And so how are we making sure that and just make sure that you're expanding your concept of warm and inviting to people who maybe you don't know. People who use a realtor. Who have a child with a disability. Or who are bringing some older person in the store who is with them. Who has kids with them. Or whatever it is that you might not be personally familiar with.
I love that. And on the topic of how can I make them come back, I would love to invite everyone to come back next week for the wonderful continuation of the series that we have. I'm going to ask the team to please drop the links on the chat right now for the programmes that we have coming and also to invite everyone to continue this conversation in Gustavo's community. And if the team could please drop also Gustavo's information in the chat, that would be fantastic. It's on the document that we have so that everybody can just move over there. We can continue with this conversation and we can continue creating a better environment for all of us and for all of the ones that we love. So thank you again, Amelia. Julie. Jonathan. Gustavo. This has been so wonderful. Thank you to each and everyone who stayed with us. I know that we went over for a few minutes, but I know that it was certainly worth it for me. Hopefully worth it for you. Please give us your feedback. I'm going to ask the team to drop the feedback form as well. Let us know what we did well, what we could improve upon.
And I will see you next Monday in here. Have a wonderful week, everyone. And again, thank you so much you so much. This is an awesome kick off of the series. Take care. Thank you, everyone. Bye.
Thank you. Bye.
Helpful Link:
BIZABILITY SERIES: How Creatives, Entrepreneurs, and Non-profits Are Changing the Way We Understand Human Potential: https://www.nypl.org/bizability