Good ramps, bad ramps: Centralized design standards and disability access in urban Russian infrastructure

C Hartblay - American Ethnologist, 2017 - Wiley Online Library
American Ethnologist, 2017Wiley Online Library
Accessible design seeks to reconfigure the social by restructuring the material. As the idea
moves globally, it becomes entwined in local logics of moral obligations between citizens
and the state. Wheelchair users in the city of Petrozavodsk, in northwestern Russia, talk
about inaccessible infrastructure as being embedded in moral relationships. In their stories,
hierarchies of expertise diffuse responsibility for outcomes and devalue user knowledge.
When accessible design elements are installed to meet minimum standards, they are “just …
Abstract
Accessible design seeks to reconfigure the social by restructuring the material. As the idea moves globally, it becomes entwined in local logics of moral obligations between citizens and the state. Wheelchair users in the city of Petrozavodsk, in northwestern Russia, talk about inaccessible infrastructure as being embedded in moral relationships. In their stories, hierarchies of expertise diffuse responsibility for outcomes and devalue user knowledge. When accessible design elements are installed to meet minimum standards, they are “just for the check mark” and often do not “work.” Wheelchair ramps produce value for businesses or governments by representing an idea of access that circulates as a commodity. Failed accessible design draws attention to a moral field governing the responsibilities of actors to produce a “good” built environment, imbricated in teleologies of progress.[disability, design, infrastructure, access, ramps, postsocialism, Russia]
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