Inclusive design for STEM facilities

One in four American adults has a physical, sensory, or cognitive disability; in some cases, a combination of two or more.  Collectively, those with disabilities represent the largest minority in the US. While most disability accommodations tend to be wheelchair access and wheelchair-reach centric, only 1.4% of building users are completely wheelchair-dependent.  Serious difficulty walking, ascending, and descending stairs is a far more prevalent challenge (12.1% of the population).  Equally widespread are cognitive impairments (12.8%) that range from concentration to perception challenges.  Hearing impairment (6.1%) is ever more common since the advent of ubiquitous earbud usage.  Vision impairment accounts for 4.8% of the population.

Among college-educated persons with disabilities, by occupation, there are notably fewer represented in STEM fields than non-STEM professions.  Closing that gap is an essential goal for higher education institutions.  How can this be achieved?

Serving the STEM education needs of people with a wide range of disabilities requires a shift in mindset—one where regulations are seen not as the limit of design, but rather as a baseline minimum.  While labs are the original active learning spaces, they typically lag behind other academic environments in providing broad accessibility.

Landmark United States civil rights legislation in the 1960s was extended to disabled individuals by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA).  Implementation of the ADA introduced building design regulations focused primarily on improving access for persons with mobility impairments.  Over the intervening decades, designers have worked to incorporate ADA-prescribed features into laboratory buildings and spaces.  Nevertheless, complying with the law only requires mobility access to one of each key element in a lab.

A more inclusive design paradigm provides undesignated access to any area or equipment in a teaching lab.  Off-the-shelf mobile service columns and easily movable and adjustable furniture and benching systems can enable this access. Moreover, these systems permit quick reconfigurations of teaching spaces to accommodate varying instructional pedagogy.

Because the ADA focuses primarily on mobility impairment, comparatively less progress has been made on improving access for those with other needs, especially those with sensory and cognitive impairments.

To that end, we employ an inclusive design approach that acknowledges that everyone will be, at some point in their lives, temporarily able-bodied, and that all of us exist on an ever-changing spectrum of physical, sensory, and cognitive abilities over the course of our lifetimes. Our aim is to ensure that no individual is denied access to education or their profession due to poorly designed spaces.

Design evolution toward inclusion

The fundamental characteristic of inclusive design is the provision of user agency—giving a person the ability to modify their learning or work environment on their own and without having to ask permission or help from others to do so. Flexibility is the key to user agency in STEM teaching and research laboratories. At the physical level, it can manifest itself with overhead grid systems and mobile service columns (to address a variety of tabletop/bench locations and reach accommodations); easy-action height-adjustable benches and chairs (for wheelchair and reach accommodation); color-coded shelves and drawers, bench-edge contrast strips, user-adjustable task-lighting (for visual and cognitive assistance); and localized acoustic paneling (to provide sound isolation and privacy at the benchtop).