A New Approach to Designing Transport Systems Free of Mobility Barriers
“You only need empathy in design, if you have excluded the people you claim to have empathy for.”
– Liz Jackson, Founder of The Disabled List
The ambition of the TRIPS project is to take practical steps to address and pre-empt discrimination of all citizens, who are dis-abled by barriers and challenges in urban transport.
By ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the EU and all Member States are committed to respect the rights of people with disabilities, including the right to mobility and independent living. In practice however, these rights have yet to materialise for disabled people in large parts of the EU, and today’s transport systems remain largely inaccessible.
As a consequence, people are disabled from accessing job opportunities, education, social and leisure activities and other services. This limits lifestyle choices, reinforces exclusion from local communities, and ultimately blocks people from participating in society as full and independent citizens.
The TRIPS project will:
Propose a co-design approach that allows people, disabled by inaccessible environments, to take the leading role in designing accessible and useable transport systems. By focusing on the experience and needs of disabled people, we aim to directly address a wide variety of barriers in current urban transport systems. This includes barriers due to for example age, health, or language.
Provide case studies that show how such co-designed mobility solutions can indeed provide inclusive urban transport-for-all in seven example European cities: Bologna, Brussels, Cagliari, Lisbon, Sofia, Stockholm and Zagreb.
