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“...disabled people aren’t like everyone else. They are everyone else.”
affects hundreds of families in the world. Currently around 10 per cent of the total world's population, or roughly 650 million people, live with a disability and females have higher rates of disability than males.
Having places one in the world's largest minority group. Eighty per cent of persons with disabilities or people with special needs live in developing countries, and as the population is aging this figure is also increasing. The World Bank estimates that 20 per cent of the world's poorest people have some kind of disability, and tend to be regarded in their own communities as the most disadvantaged. Statistics show a steady increase in these numbers. The reasons include:
- Emergence of new diseases and other causes of impairment, such as HIV/AIDS, stress and alcohol and drug abuse;
- Increasing life span and numbers of elderly persons, many of whom have impairments. In countries with life expectancies over 70 years of age, people spend on average about 8 years, or 11.5 per cent of their life span, living with disabilities.
- Projected increases in the number of disabled children over the next 30 years, particularly in the developing countries, due to malnutrition, diseases, child labor and other causes;
- Armed conflict, accidents and violence. For every person killed in warfare, three are injured and acquire a permanent form of disability.
A novel approach needs to be adopted to ‘housing for special needs’, redefining people with special needs philosophically. Housing design should be considered in its wider context- in relation to housing policy and to urban and environmental planning. The design features common to groups of people with identified ‘access needs’ should be considered and these should be included in all housing, social or otherwise. Features that should exist in housing to accommodate for the diversity of society as a whole are important.
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Participants