Capacity Building Academy VI

The CAST Project aims to create socially inclusive cultural services and products, making culture more accessible and involving vulnerable people. To facilitate this process, the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME) organised a capacity-building session on inclusive design, which was led by Beáta Sosity, a PhD candidate who specialises in disability design.

Beáta first introduced us to the human concept of disability studies, challenging our perception of what disability is. While it is always understood in comparison to something else and often compared to ‘normality’, the idea of what is ‘normal’ only reflects the norms of a given society at a specific period of time. Moreover, disability is not a category limited to certain groups of the society, but a fundamental part of human existence. Every human being is essentially disabled, due to being fundamentally dependent on technology and external interventions in order to reach its full potential.

Social change starts with awareness. The next step is accessibility: enabling people of all abilities to use and engage with an environment, product, website or service; it means removing barriers. Examples include step-free access, tactile wayfinding, easy-to-read information and captioned videos.

Inclusion goes beyond this. The New European Bauhaus defines inclusion as accessibility and affordability and co-creation. It means involving everyone and considering the full range of human diversity – ability, language, culture, gender, age and other forms of human difference – as part of the design process.

Project partners will receive further expert advice and guidance on how to incorporate inclusive design into their pilot actions. The results will feed into the CAST Model, ready for broader application.