The potential of disability experience for heritage. Lessons learned through collaboration with disabled people as user/experts

The relation between accessibility and conservation is often contested, resulting in tensions between accessibility advocates and heritage experts. While the importance and necessity of accessibility and gradually the broader notion of inclusivity for diverse users (e.g. disabled people) is becoming more evident, existing discussions mainly focuses on the issues and problems of accessibility in the heritage context. In this article, instead of focusing on the constraints, we present disability experience as a generative resource rather than hindering liability.

Disabled people, 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 practice, 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.

Acknowledging 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, our research on inclusive built heritage builds upon methods used in the context of inclusive design and adapts them for the heritage context in order to gain insights into disabled people’s experience of built heritage. By conducting multiple case studies in diverse heritage sites in collaboration with disabled people as user/experts, we observe the potential of the theoretical and methodological output of the research for the broader conservation practice, which is gradually moving towards collaborative approaches involving diverse others. The approach put forward by our research provides an opportunity to rethink our normative approach in heritage conservation, questioning assumptions and habits (in e.g. heritage evaluation) and challenging our preconceptions.