Universal design, trauma-informed care, and accessibility applied
By Talcott Broadhead, MSW
As agencies and organizations, we have a responsibility to promote safe, accessible, and equitable environments. Organizations are not people and yet they are staffed by people, they serve people and they are embedded in communities of people. Therefore organizations have a responsibility to understand the socio-cultural dynamics of people and the different truths that these dynamics hold based upon one’s social identity. Have you thought about how implementing a trauma-informed, accessibility approach, can positively transform the relationships you have with people?
As microcultures, organizations have the unique opportunity to go above and beyond the limits of equality and accommodation. Policies that focus on equality; those which treat all people the same are insufficient for social change and they will not make for a healthy community or a safe workplace. Policies and habits that promote equity, the practice of ensuring that each person or group has the tools that they need to access relevant resources in order to live fulfilling lives, are more healthy and just.1 When we approach the way we serve and perceive people from a trauma-informed, accessibility approach we are also acknowledging that there is a connection between traumatic experiences and oppression.2
What does it mean to be trauma-informed?
Developing an awareness of how trauma impacts people and who and why it impacts certain people and groups chronically, is at the foundation of trauma-informed care. It changes a person’s worldview and often alters their view of self. Trauma can change people physically, emotionally, spiritually, cognitively, psychologically, and relationally. Trauma can also impact resilience in both directions. When we understand the way that trauma changes things, we are able to make sense of the many adaptations and responses that people develop to horrific experiences.3
People who come from groups or possess identities that have been historically marginalized have a higher likelihood of having experienced trauma and this trauma may be experienced personally or collectively, (e.g., natural disaster, historical trauma).4 5 People with disabilities, while we are not monolithic in identity or experience, share the collective history of being cast out of many societies, institutionalized, medically experimented upon, deemed deviant, ugly, monstrous, and less than human. In the United States, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) with disabilities experience ableism and racism. LGBTQIA+ people with disabilities experience ableism and heterosexism and cissexism. Disability oppression intersects will many different types of oppression: ageism, sizism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, sexism, classism, and more. And all of the ways in which these intersect can cause an accumulation of trauma injuries.
Being trauma-informed simply asks that we approach each person with the awareness that they may have been impacted by trauma and that the trauma may be related to targeting based upon their social identities. Treating people, creating programs, and designing spaces that take into account the ways that trauma can change a person makes room for healing. It makes a space accessible for more people.
To learn more about trauma-informed approaches, we recommend that people start with reading Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Connie Burk and Laura van Dernoot Lipsky
What is Accessibility and Why Not Accommodation?
In 2005, two Queer, disabled Women of Color, Patty Berne and Mia Mingus, began having conversations together about the limitations of the disability rights movement. There were major legal rights being established that were important for disabled people and yet in their lives, Berne and Mingus clearly understood the truth that rights do not guarantee justice. They recognized and experienced how disability rights work was being forged mostly by and for white people, and it did not account for the ways in which people with disabilities experienced ableism differently based upon their multiple identities. They began to use the term “Disability Justice” as a way to describe a framework that recognizes that ableism and white supremacy are inextricably linked.6
Berne and Mingus were joined by others: Stacey Milbern, Leroy Moore, Eli Clare, and Sebastian Margaret. Together they identified disability justice as a framework that examines disability and ableism as they relate to other forms of oppression and identity (race, class, sexuality, gender identity, citizenship, incarceration, size, age). Trauma-informed care requires that we approach people from this same intersectional framework.
Organizations are reflections of the societies around them therefore it is my hope that they will be influenced by this framework of disability justice and organizations can promote equity as a strategy that moves them closer to justice. Accessibility work is the tactic through which they can do so. A landmark legislation of the disability rights movement was the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act. This is a law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in public accommodation, employment, access to government services, and transportation. As Berne, Mingus, and others understood, this law placed the burden of proof of disability and need for accommodation on the disabled person. The law, while a landmark, is hardly a high watermark.
Accommodation and accessibility are not the same things. Accommodation is a legal obligation to fulfill a request by a person with a documented disability to remove a barrier to access, Accessibility is the removal of as many barriers as possible to make a community as functional for as many people as possible.
The peak of accessibility when it comes to investment and forethought is considered by many to be “universal design.” Ron Mace, the architect and disabled designer who coined the term defined it as:
“Universal Design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.”7
What if organizations moved beyond the mere obligation of accommodation and merged the principles of universal design with trauma-informed approaches to disability? Organizations would become micro-movements of increased accessibility! Organizations could become more equitable for all people.
Principles of Universal Design:
- Equitable use
- Flexibility in use
- Simple and intuitive use
- Perceptible information
- Tolerance for error
- Low physical effort
- Size and space for approach and use8
Trauma-Informed Approach:
Every adult, no matter the setting, age, or disability, has a right to:
- express their sexuality, gender identity, ethnicity, race, and religion
- be free from harassment, infantilism, abuse, sexual violence, and
- have equal access to make choices about services, healing, and justice pursuits.9
Accessibility and trauma-informed care are best practices and both approaches require an organization to make an intentional commitment and investment. A fundamental tenet of accessibility work is to honor the expertise, leadership, and experience of people with disabilities. Consider hiring an accessibility coordinator or consultant. Be sure to recruit people with disabilities who specialize in this work, as we are not all content experts in this field. Explore access from a multitude of perspectives and commit to removing barriers across all levels: physical, cultural, religious, age, language, immigration status, gender, race, class, childcare needs, education, and more. Seeking out and paying for training and materials created by people with disabilities with diverse identities who have intersectional approaches to accessibility will support reducing these multitudes of barriers.
Through organization-wide education, intentional awareness-building, policy change, and the implementation of trauma-informed accessibility approaches we have the opportunity to participate in organizing more equitable communities that care.
Talcott Broadhead, MSW
Talcott Broadhead, MSW is a transgender Social Worker, author, professor, trauma specialist, and Holocaust scholar, Talcott's current work is centered at the intersections of transgender liberation, disability justice, anti-racism, historical trauma, and historical resilience. It is Talcott’s mission to teach and practice skills that promote equity, informed-knowledge, and the ethical application of socially-just social work.
References
1Nakkeeran, N., Nakkeeran, B. Disability, mental health, sexual orientation and gender identity: understanding health inequity through experience and difference. Health Res Policy Sys 16, 97 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-018-0366-1
2Polanco-Roman, L., Danies, A., & Anglin, D. M. (2016). Racial discrimination as race-based trauma, coping strategies, and dissociative symptoms among emerging adults. Psychological trauma : theory, research, practice and policy, 8(5), 609–617. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000125
3Lipsky, L. V., & Burk, C. (2009). Trauma stewardship: An everyday guide to caring for self while caring for others. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
4Ibid.
5Matheson, K., Foster, M. D., Bombay, A., McQuaid, R. J., & Anisman, H. (2019). Traumatic Experiences, Perceived Discrimination, and Psychological Distress Among Members of Various Socially Marginalized Groups. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 416. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00416
6Sins Invalid. (2019). Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA.
7Center for Universal Design NCSU - About the Center - Ronald L. Mace. (n.d.). https://projects.ncsu.edu/ncsu/design/cud/about_us/usronmace.htm.
8Ibid.
9Alliance to End Sexual Violence in Long Term Care: Project Values and Assumptions. Disability Rights Washington. (2013, April 20).