A Picturesque View to Able-Bodied Persons in the City and the Stigma of Disability

Abstract

Today, in Turkey, the percent of the disabled is %12. Thus, there are 10 million disabled people and when you take the disabled into account with their families half of the Turkish society is affected directly from disability. In addition to that, if we take elders, pregnant, children, obsesses and very tall or short persons who suffer from a kind of temporary or permanent disability into account, we face an incredible situation. These people in city who are limited in terms of motion feel the necessity of design approaches which minimize physical and spatial hindrances in order to travel and wander around in a safe way in places. In addition to the accessibility of the physical environment by the disabled, environmental factors being the cause of disability is quite significant in terms of urban spaces. In this paper, what cities of Turkey, urban planning and design offer to the disabled and what they do not is being investigated, in particular and in general, what is attainable by the help of a universal and inclusive design and universal and inclusive planning to reach a universal, accessible, livable, usable, fair and inclusive city.

Keywords

• Accessibility, disability, cities of Turkey, universal design, barrier-free.