The Potential of Disability Experience for Heritage: Lessons Learned Through Collaboration with User/Experts

The relation between accessibility and conservation is often contested, resulting in tensions between accessibility and heritage advocates. While the importance and necessity of accessibility and gradually the broader notion of inclusivity for diverse users (e.g. people with different abilities) is becoming more evident, existing discussions mainly focus on the problems and constraints of accessibility in the heritage context. Instead, in this article, we present disability as a generative resource.
People with disability experience, referred to as ‘the other’ and ‘strangers in their own land’, similar to people with different ethnicities, cultures and genders, have been subject to discrimination. In the heritage field, the notion of self and other is mainly focused on colonial and occupied heritage. Additionally, it can be seen in the division between heritage experts and the others. Nowadays, the conservation practice is gradually moving towards collaborative approaches involving diverse others.
Our research on inclusive built heritage acknowledges the existing challenges at the crossroad of accessibility and conservation. Following the example of research that rethinks disability’s meaning and its impact on architecture, we build upon methods used in the context of inclusive design and adapt them for the heritage context. In order to gain insight into how different bodies and minds experience built heritage, we collaborate with user/experts on multiple case studies in diverse heritage sites. We observe the potential of the theoretical and methodological output of the research for the broader conservation practice. The approach put forward by our research provides an opportunity to rethink normative approaches in heritage conservation, questioning assumptions and habits (in e.g. heritage evaluation) and challenging prevailing preconceptions.