Paul DeFazio

Absolutely.

Okay, great.

I think we’re on now.

I was like, I don’t want Jean to say something I’m going to miss, like something amazing.

So yeah, I guess you were talking about hearing and sight loss and integrating that into the sort of like PAS 6463 guidance that you worked on.

And yeah, I guess I had a couple of things I wanted to chat with you about today.

One of them was just basically like from my perspective, I’m sort of, I’m a low vision blind architect, and I had been working in inclusive design for just a couple of years.

And I realized that there are still just a lot of gaps in my knowledge about like how the whole research process, like how does something go from being like something a disabled person feels or needs or wants?

And then how does that get from there to end up like on my desk when I’m like reviewing a plan as like a piece of guidance?

Well, I think it’s, where are you based?

You’re US, aren’t you, somewhere?

Yeah, I’m based in Boston.

I don’t know if you have localized standards and guidance, but here in the UK, we have national.

And our national standards are produced by volunteers, and I’m one of those volunteers.

But every accessibility consultant in the country would work to those same standards.

So they would all look at PAS 6463 and our BS 8300.

And all the work and the content is from volunteers saying, not new research normally, it’s kind of stuff that’s already out there, but being kind of brought together by a group of people who care passionately.

And then a standard comes out.

Now, the main standard, our BS 8300, has become quasi-mandatory in some areas of the country.

So some planning authorities will insist on it.

And even our building regulations, which are mandatory, are about very basic access.

So they’ll ask for visual contrast, but they won’t ask for much else, nothing about lighting or anything.

But they do signpost back to that British standard.

So most architects now, they kind of realize now we were more or less obliged to look at the British standards and say which bits they won’t do rather than ignore it all.

But I think my perception is that the ADA and your, I can’t think of the name of your code.

We have the ADA.

We also follow, I think in Massachusetts, we have IBC, but it’s called the 521 CMR.

It’s like an adapted version for Massachusetts.

Okay, so slightly different.

So the one I know of is slightly different, but it is very coded and mandatory.

And there’s not much kind of deviation, whereas our standards here are kind of saying the principles of what people need and how you get to that point is for the designer to kind of engineer.

If it’s physical space, spatial stuff, we give measurements.

And if it’s visual contrast, again, we give some light reflectance value measurements as minimum.

So they’re in our building regs.

So we have to have, for example, visual contrast between the floor and the wall and doors and furniture and things like that.

That’s kind of a given.

It doesn’t always happen, but that’s a given.

But usually something is, when we sit on the British Standards Committee and we’re talking about what to put in the next revision, we will look at all the other things that are out there and what we need to try and capture.

And that would also look at some in-student research.

But it would look at research, any research that anyone in the room knows about.

Oh, well, that’s saying do that.

And it’s well-researched.

So we think that’s a given.

Or somebody over here has written some guidance on X, Y, Z, and everybody’s following it.

So we know it’s got buy-in and it’s got some merit.

So they would kind of allude to that and signpost back as well.

So that’s kind of how we do it.

It’s about a two-year, usually typical turnaround to update an existing standard.

I see.

And you said you’re a volunteer.

How did you become a volunteer and where did those volunteers come from?

So the British Standards Committee is made up of people representing professional bodies and some individuals who are kind of pretty special and high up in the field and leading lights.

So my professor now retired and the course has gone.

I did a master’s degree in inclusive environments at one of our universities.

He wanted me on that British Standards Committee and said, look, you’ve got a facilities management background and nobody else has.

So can you come and join?

So I went to the Facilities Management Association here in the UK and said, this opportunity has arisen.

They want an access and inclusion specialist, but from an FM perspective, would you like to be represented?

It won’t cost you.

It just cost me my time.

And they said, yes, please.

We’ll do a letter.

And then over time, I’ve now got three sensory, two sensory.

And what says the Many Air Society, which is a balance condition with the ear and often causes deafness as well.

And the, who was the other one?

A macular degeneration society.

So obviously a number one cause of sight loss.

They said, I, they had trained me to be a trainer as a volunteer to go into the community.

And I said, oh, would you like me to represent you on this committee?

And they said, yes.

So I kind of represent those.

So it’s, you kind of, you can go in as an individual and I probably could now after 25 years doing this, but normally you go through the route where you are represented in a professional body.

I see.

Someone kind of is like, oh, Gina would be a good person because she represents this perspective and has this knowledge.

Yeah.

So there’s, there’s kind of, it’s quite a few architects in the room, but they will be represent, one will be representing Royal Institute of British Architecture.

Another one might be representing an interior design institute or town plan.

It might be an architect or a planner, town planning, building regulations authority, all kind of sorts.

We’ve also got people from Mind, which is our mental health charity.

So it’s a bit of a mix, really.

Yeah.

I’m curious about that.

Like what, what would you say is like the range of people who are kind of at the table, like having those conversations?

They’re all kind of working.

Yeah.

There’s, I don’t think there are many lay people on there, maybe a couple that have come from something else, but generally speaking, they are people that are working professionally and they may well have a disability or a sensory difference or something else that kind of adds to their offer, but it’s not a kind of given.

We try, they’ve always tried to make sure that all the disabilities are kind of represented in the room through people representing.

So for example, our Royal National Institute for the Blind in the UK, which is our biggest charity for sight loss, who I work with a lot, they have now got a new access inclusion manager.

And I suggested that they write in and nominate that person to be on it.

So she will be, but you know, when we’re in the conversation, any of us can say, I happen to know this about sight loss, or I happen to know this about here, you know, he’s got a balance condition, which is why I was representing the Many Air Society.

So I can say, I know about balance conditions.

I know about here, you know, I wear hearing aids.

I know about some of these things.

And it doesn’t matter that I’m talking from an FM officially, I’m still me and I still have the other knowledge.

So it’s quite good.

Yeah, it sounds like there’s sort of a mix of lived expertise.

Like some people bring that.

And then also there’s sort of a lot of people who are engaging with a lot of different kinds of research and also coming from different fields.

And so that all kind of comes together.

Is that what I’m?

We haven’t got, we haven’t got many academics that are doing research.

There might be some that do little bits.

I do sometimes, but I think what was helpful to me is when I know that somebody is doing research and then I can feed that.

I’ve seen a piece of research that does this, or I think there’s a hole here.

So for example, in the last year, I’ve become aware of and been asked and been involved in doing quite a bit on suicide prevention from a kind of building perspective in terms of somebody being able to jump off a tall building.

So that’s very linked to mental health.

It’s also mental health is linked to neurodiversity and so on.

So as soon as you know about something, I can say when we do the review, I think it should have a sentence or two at least and signpost back to this document, which is rather good.

And other people would look at it and say, yes, we agree.

The whole thing with our standards then go out to public consultation.

So everybody can download it and read it.

And they get something like six weeks, I think, to have a look and feedback.

So when I did that past 6463, where I was technical author, I promoted it a lot and said, look, this is coming.

This is coming.

Please look, I want to get it right.

4000 comments came in.

So that was at the one year point.

It took me another year to go through all those comments and meticulously kind of test them, look at what they said.

Was it a slight change?

Was it a big change?

Was it another rabbit hole to go down?

So some things would take two seconds to fix and other things might take two or three days or even weeks to kind of really explore properly and then put into the revised standards.

It goes out as a draft, has public consultation, and then it kind of gets revised based on these comments.

You kind of get a huge wad of coll And like figure out, you know, how to make some kind of solution.

And also I think it points to the fact that when you’re doing inclusive design, sometimes you end up with like, people have really contradictory sets of needs and you have to sort of negotiate that.

Yeah.

So we’ve, our British standard is a consensus of a balanced approach.

So we don’t do, so for example, a good example of this would be, we have tactile paving.

So embossed paving as a warning surface where we do a dropped curb because obviously as a visually impaired person, you could just wander into the road and not realise you’ve come off the pavement.

So if there’s a dropped curb, we put this warning surface in and we put it at the top and bottom of external steps.

But we don’t put it everywhere because a lot of people find it uncomfortable to walk on.

And if you’ve had diabetes and sight loss through that, it’s likely that it will hurt your feet.

Because it’s given you a warning, it’s also very uncomfortable.

And it makes a wheelchair and a pushchair very juddery.

So we’ve got a balanced approach.

We have it in the really important life-threatening places, but we don’t have it just everywhere without good reason.

So it’s used kind of sparingly.

And I know that other countries have got more in places like airports, for example.

We haven’t yet.

I’d quite like to see guidance paths, even if it’s just a narrow strip to one side that a long cane would pick up or someone might pick up underfoot.

We have done quite a lot in wayfinding lately.

And because I’m working on Moorfields Eye Hospital, which is quite a famous hospital in the UK, it’s the main sight loss hospital.

And so I’ve been working with them and with Guide Dogs UK.

And we’ve been looking at kind of wayfinding and signage, but digital, how you do it digital as well.

So you have your fixed sign that will give you good contrast because we are 70% contrast between the text and the background, but we don’t dictate which way around it is.

So it could be navy blue and cream or something like that.

And then we’re saying we’ve got things like NaviLens.

I don’t know if you’ve got it there, but it is like a fancy QR code and you can put that on the sign.

And then I switch my mobile phone onto that app.

And as I’m approaching, it’s kind of telling me, you are three feet away from accessible toilet or you’re on, you know, this is the lift and this will take you to floors, whatever they’ve preset into it, that will tell you.

And there’s some really advanced stuff coming through now.

There were about, I think the last time I looked a couple of years ago, there were 35-ish software packages that was specifically for wayfinding for people’s sight loss.

And so God knows how many, goodness knows how many there are now, but some of them are very good, sophisticated.

So RNIB is kind of looking at a lot of these and they have it in their building as examples so people could come and see their building in London and experience these things themselves.

And as a end user, you don’t have to pay anything because the cost is met either by the building owner or the city owner on that sort of basis.

So they can go into street environments as well.

And there’s one, I think it’s Good Maps, that they had their building kind of scanned by Good Maps.

And now you can also get the complete wayfinding experience where wherever you turn, it will tell you where you’re orientated and all that sort of thing.

So it’s not just one code telling you stationary stuff, it’s actually taking the whole journey.

Wow, that sounds amazing.

Like, and what, like, it seems like also I’ve noticed this as someone who looks at a lot of international guidance, there seems like there’s just a lot of stuff coming out of the UK right now.

There is, I think, yeah, because I’ve done quite a few talks in America and I went to Australia because they wanted some of our guidance over there and I think Canada is copying the powers.

So I just think we’re kind of, we’ve been liberated in a way that our standards don’t confine us.

So it’s not so much about code, it’s about applying it in a particular situation.

And that is quite energizing and allows a lot of people to be very passionate about what they’re doing.

And the other thing is we do a lot with stakeholder engagement and it’s almost a given now if you’re doing a major project, you’d have to show you are engaging with users and that would have to include disabled people.

Particularly if it was kind of a hospital or transport, things like that, rather than just an office.

Yeah, there’s a lot there that I want to ask.

I’m trying to think what specifically.

The first thing I was curious about was just what, I guess the, what conditions in the UK gave rise to that kind of environment where that could happen?

Like I’ve heard that there has been some like, well, you work at Borough Hapold and I know that they do a huge amount, but is there some sort of government relationship or like what, how does that kind of come to be?

I, as an individual, have a government relationship because I’m, the government currently has a program that they call Disability Access Ambassadors and what they’ve pulled together, I think there’s 15 of us and it only lasts for three years and then you pass on the baton.

I am the built environment ambassador, but there is one for rail, there’s one for buses, one for tourism, there’s one for technology.

So we’re all slightly different and what I have found is when I get in the room with those people, everybody’s doing so much that is really powerful and I kind of constantly writing down all these wonderful initiatives.

So collectively, it’s a great initiative.

I think the government takes up, they just look good because they’re doing that.

They don’t pay us voluntary again.

It is a shame that so many of these things are voluntary, but it is the way it is, but that’s helpful.

But the government, no, I think the standards, the British standards like a quasi government, I think it’s part funded by government, a part commercial and they have options.

So they can pull together a committee and invest in a standard and get it finished and then charge people for it.

So they get their money back that way, which our main standard, the BSA 300 is, or they can go down a fast track route on a niche area where the neurodiversity one came from, where they managed to get funding.

So, for example, when I found out, when I was asked to be technical author, they only had the main funder.

No, they had two funders.

They had TFL, Transport for London, which is the whole of the kind of greater London area, very congested area.

And it’s got rail and buses and one airport and they’ve got kind of water taxis and things like that.

So they’ve got quite a mix and underground.

So they were the main sponsor, put money into the pot.

And then there was a flooring manufacturer that was very interested in floor patterns and dementia.

So they put some money into the pot.

And it came to me and said, would I be willing to be technical author?

Oh, interesting.

And I said I would.

And normally it’s paid, but they said, well, we haven’t got the funding yet.

So we’re still trying to fundraise.

But will you be the technical author when that happens?

Yes.

So I went to Bureau Happold and said, look, this is happening.

I’d really like to be technical author.

They’re trying to raise money.

What do you think?

Do you think Bureau Happold could sponsor my time to do it?

So it’s like a benefit in kind.

So that allowed them to tick a box for a quarter of the funding needed because they didn’t have to pay a technical author.

And one of my clients, BBC, said, oh, if you’re writing it, Jean, we’re happy to give some money.

And Sport England, who are also clients, said, oh, we’d like to see this reach everybody.

So we will sponsor the free issue of this to everybody.

So many years.

So it’s quite interesting.

It’s a very commercially driven and yet we still had to have the steering group independent and a wider review panel and then the public consultation.

So the same rules applied as it would to a British standard that’s done without that funding.

But the difference is that it would have been cheaper to buy if they did have to buy it.

And it’s called an evaluation standard.

And I think it’s a really good way of kickstarting something.

I did one on or I contributed to one on menstrual menopausal health in the workplace and that started in a similar way.

And it’s now an international standard.

What is the name of that one?

Has it been released?

The UK number was 30416.

I can email you the ISO number.

I don’t know.

It’s really weird with the ISOs.

So it’s an international standards body.

But America very often doesn’t send anyone to represent them.

I think they kind of feel like don’t take this the wrong way, that they might be superior and they don’t need to follow anybody else’s standards.

But I’ve been on them for fire evacuation and other things.

And there hasn’t been any representative from the United States at all.

Yeah.

And I think in the US, I think we’re a little bit stuck in what we have.

Canada did attend and they very interested.

You get one person from each country in those in the international standards and very interested.

But a lot of this now is done online instead of traveling.

And that really, really helps because when you’re a volunteer like that and you’ve got to fund your own air flights or your train travel from one end of the country to the other and things like that to get to meetings, it can make a difference as to who’s in the room.

But since COVID, need wider corridors in life that just for faith.

But of course, people with those other things, we talk about intersectionality a great deal.

We are not siloed in that way.

We are kind of human and we’ll have a mix of things going on.

That makes sense.

And also, yeah, I guess that like, it’s interesting.

Like I’m thinking about the, I guess, inclusive design and also the sort of legacy of universal design that it builds on.

And the idea that from what I’ve experienced, inclusive design is really about those kinds of intersections or the sort of areas where the Venn diagrams are most overlapping, also about resolving some of the conflicts from people who are maybe on the edges and they can’t figure out how to, it seems like it might be impossible to resolve, but then you have to get some ingenuity in there.

And the relationship between that and, yeah, it seems like another important thing is actually to have things on the edge.

Like I’m thinking of like the deaf space guidelines that we have in the US, which aren’t really inclusive design guidelines, and they have some problems in that regard, but they’re also very innovative because they’ve sort of honed in on this one specific set of needs and this one specific sort of like area of deaf culture that they’ve kind of built a little bit in isolation, but also then that sort of can spread back out into the inclusive design space and you learn a lot from it.

Yeah, I think that’s a good point because, so the neurodiversity standard, as we zoomed in on neurodivergence on its own, and we sometimes zoom into just sight loss or hearing loss and that, and then you kind of come back out of it and then you kind of have to merge and find this balanced approach.

So that’s what our main standard does is a mix of all those things.

I’m interested to see what happens next because we’re just at the brink of starting a review and toying with the idea about whether it should include the other protected characteristics in one standard or in several, because it would make it an enormous standard to digest.

Yeah, that’s always- Because they charge for that standard, but because it’s already at the maximum amount they can charge for a standard, we could put a great deal more in there and people would just still have to pay that one amount.

It’s quite dear, but they could do that one amount.

But I think many of the other documents I get involved in are free and we’re kind of hopefully trying to find lots of ways of providing free resources to people because the smaller buildings, the kind of landlords and what have you that haven’t got the financial resources need to read this stuff too.

Right, right.

And that’s something that like, when you were saying that I was thinking about length and like, I know that that’s something that we deal with a lot is, and I think one of the kind of challenges of the ADA is that it’s very concise actually, some of the points in it, even though it’s a very long document.

And sometimes what you end up missing is that sort of language that’s like, who benefits from this and how, and like, what are their specific, why does this exist?

It’s just kind of like 22 inches for that doorknob or like whatever.

I made up that number, it’s not correct, but I think, yeah, just getting into some of the- We did have to get special permission at the start with the BSAT000, the main standard, to write it in that different way.

Because we said, if we just put, it’s this and nothing else, what people need to understand is what the impact is when you don’t do it.

Right.

But like we had a, there was at one point they had really long, and you probably got these in the States as well, you’ve got glass doors and there is a handle both sides, which is confusing, a pull handle both sides, even though it only goes one way.

But it also extends down to ground.

And I was working at the City of London Corporation and we had user groups there.

And one of the wheelchair users said to me, can I show you something about this design?

And he showed me how that would catch on his wheelchair and either break the wheel or break his foot.

Wow.

And then it occurred to me that it could also affect guide dogs because, or a child, because it’s a lower level.

And because I was on the British Standards Committee, I can say, look, we’ve had this happen.

And I said, it would make sense if we ask people not to extend the pull handle down below 700 because then the wheelchair user will kind of not get damaged and stuff.

And everybody thought about it.

It’s like, there’s no reason not to do this.

So they did it.

It doesn’t mean everybody follows that, but it does mean that we can quote it to developers and designers and say, please have your handles no lower than 700.

And it works some of the time.

So it’s better than nothing.

Yeah.

And that’s an example of, I think, what we talked about at the beginning of like a disabled person just being like, oh, I’ve lived through this many times.

This is what I’ve experienced.

And then in that case, the pipeline was just directly from them to you and then to the standards.

It’s interesting because we have had, when I first came into this field 25 years ago, there would be some disability groups rightly quite angry that not enough was being done.

But then you would kind of, they would go in and they’d talk to people.

And so, for example, in a worst case scenario, I went to look at small hotel and they said, we’ve got wheelchair accessible rooms.

I said, can I have a look at one?

And it had a good threshold of, I don’t know, three, four, three, four.

You work in inches, yeah?

Yeah.

Three, four inches.

Three, four inches high.

I’m like, well, that’s not wheelchair accessible.

Well, it is because we have a wheelchair come every week, wheelchair user, and they can get in.

So I said, well, how do they get in?

Do you know?

And he said, yeah, I watched him once.

He goes in on his hands.

I was like, well, it’s not accessible.

But sometimes people have said, oh, we want peninsula arrangements for toilets because that’s what we want and we think that’s best.

But there’s solid research that shows when you do that, because the two drop-down rails wobble a bit, it’s less secure for an independent wheelchair user.

So if it’s an independent wheelchair user toilet, we want a corner layout.

So the grab rail you pull yourself across with is a fixed horizontal grab rail.

And there was lots and lots of testing.

So some stuff is tested.

Other stuff is loads of people feeding in their thoughts on it.

The PAS 6463 was a bit of a mix of both.

We did a literature review at the outset to see what was out there in the world about the subject, collected all that in, lots of meetings about the language we were going to use and everything.

I did a first draft and then cherry pick people on the steering group.

So there was an acoustician, there was a lighting engineer, like, can you do the first draft of this?

And then I’ll have a look at it, tweak it.

And that’s kind of how we worked.

And then it went out for a review panel, made changes because of that.

And then it went out to the wider world.

So I think that pragmatic approach to everybody having a voice, but being able to temper it so you haven’t got an angry individual with a very specific need for what they want.

A loud voice, yeah.

Overruling other people who are more polite in the room and things like that.

And that can happen sometimes.

Oh, totally.

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s like the power and the danger of advocacy is that you can develop a really loud voice and advocate for something, but it might not necessarily be the need of everyone else around you.

I’m thinking of also, for example, bike lane advocates in Boston and their conflicts with disability advocates who take transit.

And there has to be a sort of allyship there.

Otherwise, it doesn’t really work.

We’ve had a lot of…

When I worked at the City of London Corporation, we used to get…

We had a user group and then people putting in planning applications for different schemes.

We would look and say, well, this one needs to go to the user group.

So public building, it’s a hospital or it’s this, that, the other.

Bring it to the user group.

And there’d kind of be this resistance so that the architects and designers would come in with it already designed.

So this is wonderful.

This is what we’ve done for you.

And then you’d have people in the room question it, interrogate it, and maybe get a bit angry.

Because of that.

So they tried to educate people that they can consult in a nicer way, like true engagement, not lip service.

Don’t bring them necessarily a finished design and say, this is what we’ve got at the moment, but we genuinely want your input.

Don’t be afraid to comment and move stuff around or change finishes and things like that.

Yeah, and that’s a frustration that I’ve definitely experienced having been a user tester many times, is that sometimes you go in and you get great, you give feedback, they sort of implement some of it.

Sometimes it feels like it’s really just there for them to say, yes, we talked to disabled people and they loved it.

Yeah, we call that pain lip service.

So it’s just, there’s no real action or meaning behind it.

They do it because they have to.

We quite often will front or facilitate a stakeholder engagement because to do it properly, I don’t know that you need this, but many visually impaired people might.

We always do tactile plans if we think someone’s got some