Enka BLANCHARD, CNRS, Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, France
Accessibility --- implying accessibility for disabled people, or at least some subgroup of them --- has become a common concern for urban policymaking, with a strong focus on the nature of spaces and their physical characteristics, with progress often being evaluated through the percentage of "accessible spaces".
However, recent work has shown that disabled spatialities can differ not only quantitatively (with a strongly reduced set of places one goes to), but also through a qualitative transformation of one's relationship to space.
This communication will explore the discrete nature of such spatialities, where one's lived environment can be reduced to a small set of locations, contributing to the invisibility of the disabled population. Following Tim Ingold, the disabled experience is not that of a wayfarer but of a transported traveller, not free to explore space but moved without control from one point to another, and back.
These extreme spatial restrictions make this situation a suitable target for models informed by discrete mathematics. These allow us to show, for example, the importance of certain temporary obstacles that most pedestrians would ignore. Below a certain threshold, they have next to no impact on spatialities, but above said thresholds, a quantitative difference appears and spatial movement -- let alone exploration -- becomes impossible. This is not just due to actual inaccessibility, but to the inability to plan in advance in a risky situation. Crucially, this work does not focus on any particular form of impairment, but is applied to many cases: psychological, physical, cognitive and sensory.
Mots clés : Spatialities|Disability|Discrete Mathematics|Modeling|Accessibility
A104299EB