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I was born with one hand, so I consider myself very fortunate because I’ve known no different.
Before I started my professional career, I had a career as an athlete. I represented Australia for six years at an elite level: multiple world cups, multiple world championships; and I competed in Cross Country Skiing and Biathlon. Biathlon is where you ski and you shoot.
I was very fortunate to be selected for both the Torino 2006 Winter Paralympics and the Vancouver 2010 Winter Paralympics. Having experienced first-hand what it actually is to live in an Olympic Village, compete in an Olympic Stadium, it made me really passionate about the difference that inclusive design can bring to the world around us.
Which then in turn, when I started my career as a landscape architect, and now an integrated designer, it was almost a harmony between my career as an athlete coming into a career in design. It was a merging of passion behind inclusivity and accessibility, not just for a highly tailored environment such as a Paralympic environment, but the learnings from that which you can apply to almost any project.
There is a fine line between good design and great design and an example that I like to use in terms of the difference between accessibility and inclusive design is turnstiles.
Every train station, every Olympic Village, has a turnstile where you scan your ticket. At train stations you’ll see some turnstiles are wider to fit a wheelchair. Now that is accessible design, which is fantastic, but a lot of the time where you tap on and off is on the right-hand side and I don’t have a right hand.
So, a good way to explain accessible design versus inclusive design is barrier free design. For someone in a wheelchair it’s barrier free to them, which makes that design accessible for them. But for me it’s not inclusive because I don’t have a right hand – I have to reach across.
Genuinely it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to improve the outcomes that we have within our built environment whether it be a stadium, accommodation or public transport or public realm just to get from place A to place B. For an Olympic Games or a Paralympic Games the investment in an effort in creating inclusive places truly is a once in a lifetime opportunity, not just for us as designers but to leave a legacy well after the games is gone as an event.
Aurecon is not a sponsor of the Australian Olympic Committee Incorporated, the International Olympic Committee, any Summer or Winter Olympic Games, the organising committee for any Summer or Winter Olympic Games, an Australian Olympic team, a section of an Australian Olympic team, or an individual member of an Australian Olympic team. This material is not intended to suggest that Aurecon has any formal association with, or has provided any sponsorship or sponsorship-like support for, any of these parties.
People Movement & Place Practice Leader – VIC & SA, Australia
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