Stephanie Kyle from Floyd Slaski Architects explains how we can design for disability, gender, religion, and anything that’s considered a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. She also highlights the biggest challenge of inclusive design which is people’s differing needs, and suggests how we best go about designing spaces.
Interview with Stephanie Kyle
Stephanie Kyle is a Senior Architect and Inclusive Design Consultant at Floyd Slaski Architects, who specialises in design for neurodiversity.
Stephanie was diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) when she was a child, but it wasn’t until her 20s that she found out she was autistic. APD is a neurodivergent condition and because this was identified early she didn’t have to grow up masking her behaviour to fit in, and got the support she needed at college and university.
Her inspiration for entering the world of architecture came early on during a workshop at her school. An architect wanted to hear their ideas about an aquarium that was being proposed in the town. When it was built, she went on a school trip to see it, thought it was atrocious and that she could do a better job herself!
Throughout her education and architecture training she was drawn to inclusive design, which includes designing for disability, gender and religion, everything that’s considered a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. She now specialises in neurodiverse, inclusive design and nonvisible disabilities; focusing on how we can design better for dementia, autism, ADHD and all the nonvisible conditions, like epilepsy or chronic pain conditions.
All architects and designers have a duty of care to the end users
Under the ARB Code of Conduct all architects and designers have a duty of care to the end users, no matter what their religion, gender or disability. Knowing the needs of the people who will use a building is the most important thing. It’s an opportunity to address varying needs and tailor the space in better way.
There are three neurocognitive profiles that each have differing sensory processing
The three neurocognitive profiles are neurotypical, neurodivergent and neurodegenerative. All these profiles describe the way that the brain is set up, its instruction manual.
The majority of people are neurotypical, but neurodivergent and neurodegenerative brains receive, process and label information in a different way.
Our senses help us navigate our environments
In addition to sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, we have three extra senses that help us relate to the built environment.
Proprioception – this is our sense of hand eye coordination, essentially where our body is in relation to itself.
Vestibular sense – this is where our body is in relation to the space around us, so being able to sense movement, maybe in a lift moving up or down, or in a car speeding up or slowing down. It’s also the sense that causes car sickness.
Interoception – this is the sense of what’s going on internally in our own body. So being able to sense if you’re tired, if you’re hungry, if you need to go to the toilet.
We have probably experienced a temporary sensory processing difference
If we are drunk, we perceive our environment differently. The speed at which we process is different, the way we speak, how we move, and think is different. Another example is a migraine. Lights may be really bright and sounds really loud, which is our brains processing that sensory information differently.
Stephanie explains that some people with sensory processing differences may experience those things all the time, but it will vary from person to person. If somebody is autistic, they might be hypersensitive to sound, which is why something as simple as a hand dryer going off might cause distress. Visual processing is often different; colours might be perceived as significantly more intense or any high contrast patterns might look like they’re moving so for some people it might look like an optical illusion all the time.
There is no such thing as one design solution fits all
Stephanie says we have a stereotype of autism based on films that show a nine-year-old boy rocking in the corner, who screams if you touch him. Although there will be some people that match that description, autism presents itself differently in each person, with individual sensory needs. This makes designing spaces for the public difficult as it becomes impossible to cater for everyone’s individual needs, so instead we design for the majority of neurodivergent people.
Fixed elements should be muted, natural and calming
By using lower chroma colour palettes we can create lower sensory environments for the primary surfaces. Things that you can’t change easily, like walls and floors, should be as muted and as natural and as calming as possible. You can then add in boldness, in removable features, things that can be changed easily, like a multi-coloured zigzag rug. You can still have feature colours and design elements if you keep them at a lower chroma intensity.
Needs can even change during the day
Stephanie points out that an individual’s needs may also change during the day, with more energising spaces perhaps needed in the morning and then a more calming space in the evening.
Two people sharing one space may have conflicting needs
When designing spaces another consideration is hypersensitivity and hyposensitivity. For some people an environment can be over-stimulating, whilst for others they may require more stimulation.
“As an autistic person, I need complete silence to work, but my brother has ADHD and he is the exact opposite. He can’t concentrate if a room is silent, so if he goes to a cafe where there’s background noise.”
Similarly, some people may require absolute silence to sleep, whereas others need to play music or have some background noise to help them sleep.
We can design for most senses
After our visual sense, smell – or our olfactory sense – is the most powerful in terms of way-finding and navigation. It is possible to design for this sense too. For example by planting scented flowers at different ends of a building, the prevailing winds will carry those scents through.
It is much harder to design for taste. Some autistic children or people with dementia may want to explore their sensory environment by putting things in their mouths. By using low VOC paints and non-chemical materials we can make sure they come to no harm. Similarly with landscape planting, avoid anything that is toxic to humans or animals.
Your home is one space that can be designed to your individual needs
The one space you can control is your home environment. Stephanie shares her preferences, although she stresses that someone else with autism might want something completely different.
When working she cannot stand any noise whatsoever, so her office is soundproofed. She controls the light levels and glare from intense light with light filtration blinds as well as blackout blinds. She has colour-changing lights and individual thermostats in each room to control the temperature depending on her needs.
All the colours she uses are low chroma, with a lower intensity than ‘brilliant white’. Each of her rooms has a different approach depending on the type of energy she needs for that space. When she’s cooking, she needs high energy so having a more energised space helps her.
Sometimes simple measures can improve soundproofing
Stephanie’s own house was built in the 1960s and needed updating. She started by insulating the ground floor, using mineral wool in the sub-floor. Her office has a separate acoustic lining that she put in using acoustic insulation boards.
There are, however, a few simple solutions that can transform the acoustics of a room. Stephanie suggests changing the floor finishes and putting up acoustic noticeboards. Rubber underlay, for example, is more soundproof than other types of underlay. Check out the noise reduction rating of each product. Typically, anything that reduces the sound by 14 decibels or more is going to be a significant improvement. You can also add acoustic absorption through soft furnishings and floor-to-ceiling thick curtains with linings. If you want to go further you can add another wall lining to the existing wall with a small stud frame that you fill with acoustic insulation.
Consulting people with ‘lived experience’ is really useful
It’s important to understand how many different conditions exist and that it’s impossible to know them all. Therefore in Stephanie’s role as a Inclusive Designer, whenever she meets somebody with a disability that she’s not encountered before, she asks them about what would make the environment better for them.
Asking the right questions is important
Meeting people with lived experience of having a specific disability or characteristic is always the best way of learning. Find out about their day-to-day needs, what they find challenging, what they would like to be improved, and so on. Then it is up to the architect to work out how to design the space to suit that client.
Building regulations don’t go into much detail to allow things to get built
Stephanie says that the building regulations are broad and general, because if they were too onerous, it would be difficult to get things built. The main criterion is that all people should be able to use all parts of a building. Everyone should be able to access it and operate everything within it in the same way. That means disabled entrances shouldn’t be put round the back of the building or windows have controls that require two hands to operate them. Touch screens and app-controlled devices for lighting controls are all beneficial.
Part M of the Building Regulations provides a guide on how to achieve this accessibility but it’s limited. Guidance BS 8300 is significantly better as it provides more detail, including the difficulties people have with certain things. For example, rather than it just telling you put an oven at 900 to 1000 mm off the floor, it tells you why you need to do that.
PAS 6463 is a guidance document specifically about neurodiversity and designing for neurocognitive and sensory processing differences. It provides a lot of detail on the issues for people but doesn’t tell you how to fix them. It’s then left to the designer to come up with a solution.
Social media can help you connect to people with lived experience
Stephanie’s top tip is to speak to people with lived experience, because that will be so much more enriching and insightful than consulting guidance documents. Social media is a great tool to help connect with people who have specific conditions and are willing to share their experience. Search using different hash tags.
We could all do better in our approach and the language we use around this topic
Disabilities can be dynamic so on some days a person might need a walking aid, or a wheelchair and then on a different day, they might not be using anything. It doesn’t mean they were faking their condition on the other days. This also applies to neurodiversity, where people can have really good days and really bad days.
Stephanie says that ‘disability’ and ‘disabled’ are not bad words, and we don’t need to avoid saying them. We need to acknowledge that disabled people exist, that they are living in a world that is not designed for them. Typically, disabled people are disabled by the environment, because if the world and all the buildings were set up to be inclusive for everybody, there wouldn’t be as many problems with using the built environment.
Finally Stephanie asks people not to say ‘people are suffering with an illness or condition’. Stephanie definitely doesn’t feel she is suffering; she’s having a great time!
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