Project Tool to assess dwelling adequation

In autumn 2022, a collaboration project will be established between the Federació de la Paràlisi Cerebral i la Pluridiscapacitat de Catalunya (FEPCCAT) and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). This project arises from the need to assess a home’s accessibility and prioritize actions to improve it in the framework of the project “Rumbo: towards a model of connected and inclusive personal autonomy.” The participants in the collaboration project are FEPCCAT technicians, UPC professors, and people diagnosed with cerebral palsy and/or multiple disabilities.

Although there are several approaches to the problem of identifying the degree of accessibility of a home, some preliminary considerations must be made: the usefulness of this result, how to understand it and how to apply it to the reality of disabled people who live in it. In addition, the usefulness of using a single indicator should be considered. Although, at a conceptual level, it allows you to position a house in a particular range, it does not allow you to identify the existing advantages and problems. This is why the need to obtain multiple indicators, corresponding to the main elements of analysis, is detected.

This is why two work indicators are proposed. A first indicator, complementary to the degree of accessibility, would be the degree of adaptation of a dwelling to its inhabitants. In this case, the analysis of a specific home is customised to its inhabitants’ needs, abilities and aspirations. That is to say, is a home, more or less accessible, suitable, useful, for its inhabitants? And going one step further, the question could be asked: what element of a house would bring greater autonomy to its inhabitants? Therefore, a second indicator would incorporate the possible impact of an improvement action on a concrete element. Both indicators could be combined in a figure of merit, the relationship between them. This figure of merit impact/adequation would allow evidence of those possible actions that would be of greater benefit to the house’s inhabitants, acting on the main accessibility barriers. It would combine the perception of the users and the reality of the housing, answering the question What improvement action should be prioritized?

Similarly, a correct selection and structuring of the elements that would be valued in a home is important, thus allowing the analysis to be carried out in a systematic way. The interaction of these elements with the inhabitants of the house implies essential considerations to be taken into account throughout the entire development of the project and the conditions of both the methodology and the work tools. There are physical elements, like a staircase, and conceptual ones, like an itinerary; essential elements, such as walls, and others that may not exist, such as a parking space; passive elements, like the floor, and other active ones, like the switches, etc.