Why doesn’t the world have better accessible spaces? Why do professionals think the ADA is “good enough”? It’s because the typical components of accessibility - ramps, grab bars, and other elements - are grafted on as afterthoughts. And since we all fear the trappings of getting older, or becoming less able, designers don’t dig in to explore a deeper potential.

 

It’s time to leave the ADA in the dust and elevate accessibility and inclusion into the realm of Architecture. Buildings need to work for everybody and every body: young, old, wheeling, walking, sighted, blind, six foot three or three foot six.

 

It’s time to reimagine beautiful buildings as not just dramatically sculptural or deeply connected with nature, but also infused with humanistic purpose: to orchestrate a profoundly comfortable, functional existence for human beings in all our diversity and throughout our lives.

 

Reaching that harmony of form and purpose is possible and necessary. It is a new definition of beauty; an alchemy combining the creativity of art and the science of accessibility that lifts architecture up to a new level for everyone: The Art of Access.