Doctoral Dissertation Research: Designing Access for Disabled People. Negotiating Barrier-Free Environments

残疾影响到全球人口的很大一部分，但其定义和运作方式各不相同，影响到从身份到住宿、无障碍和公平等广泛问题。这一博士论文项目利用在城市中进行的独特的自然实验，这些城市正在回顾和前瞻性地设计无障碍空间，以了解在不同背景下推出无障碍空间时，对残疾的体验和理解的差异如何影响无障碍空间的实施。在城市研究、人类学和残疾研究方面，研究人员提供了新的材料，以考虑前瞻性和回溯性设计对纳入和获取的影响。该项目支持研究生的培训，并与学术界和非学术界的受众和利益攸关方广泛分享其成果。这项研究项目使用比较的视角来告知不同的利益相关者如何解释、理解和制定准入。在促进无障碍环境的两个城市，调查人员使用各种综合人种学和档案方法来探讨三个相关问题：(1)谁的专业知识决定了如何定义和实施无障碍环境？(2)不同类型的残疾人如何参与无障碍环境？(3)地区政治如何影响对无障碍环境专业知识和不同体验的估值？通过从比较的角度理解ACCESS，这个项目将有助于为科学残疾研究、城市规划、政治人类学中的前沿问题提供信息，同时为关于身份和包容性的关键辩论提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Disability affects large swaths of the global population but is variably defined and operationalized, affecting a broad range of issues, from identity, to accommodation, access, and equity. This doctoral dissertation project leverages unique natural experiments in cities that are both retrospectively and prospectively designing barrier-free spaces to understand how variation in the experience and understanding of disability impact the implementation of accessible spaces as they are rolled out in different contexts. Contributing to urban studies, anthropology, and disability studies, the investigators provide new materials to consider the effects of prospective and retrospective design on inclusion and access. This project supports a graduate student’s training and shares its findings broadly with academic and non-academic audiences and stakeholders. This research project uses a comparative lens to inform how different stakeholders interpret, understand, and enact access. In two cities promoting barrier-free environments, the investigators use a variety of synthetic ethnographic and archival methods to engage three related questions: (1) Whose expertise determines how barrier-free is defined and implemented? (2) How do people with heterogeneous disabilities engage with barrier-free environments? (3) How do regional politics impact the valuation of expertise and variable experiences of barrier-free environments? By understanding access from a comparative perspective, this project will help to inform cutting-edge issues in scientific disability studies, urban planning, political anthropology while informing key debates on identity and inclusion.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.