Hamraie, Aimi (Author)
Emory University
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie
Publication date: 2013
Language: English
Edition Details: Advisor: Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie
Physical Details: 305 pp.
Universal Design (UD) is a movement to make the built environment accessible to a broad range of human diversity. UD emerged in the mid-1980s as an alternative to barrier-free approaches to disability access. Existing scholarship has largely taken UD for granted as the best, most inclusive approach to design. The design studies literature on UD focuses on evaluating specific designs, promoting accessibility to designers, or arguing that UD can result in better implementation of the requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act. In the humanities and social sciences, critical disability studies scholars often cite UD as proof of the validity of social constructivist models of disability. These fields have neglected an in-depth exploration of UD's historical emergence through 19th and 20th century scientific research practices that have often been at odds with the goal of disability inclusion. This dissertation is the first major attempt to address this gap in existing knowledge about UD. Applying a methodology from the history and philosophy of science, called historical epistemology, I explore the history of UD as an epistemic community emerging from a number of scientific research milieus, including eugenics, rehabilitation, scientific management, and military human factors research. I argue that UD is made possible by epistemic regimes that make human bodies legible as evidence to designers, but that emerged from projects of standardizing, eliminating, or curing disability. UD performs epistemological activism within these regimes, intervening to challenge their epistemologies and methodologies, and creating new ways of knowing bodies that can make better disability access possible.
...MoreDescription Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. . ProQuest Doc. ID 1426128180.
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