On day 23 of World Alzheimer's Month/Dementia Awareness Month #DAM2020 we are pleased to share the Alzheimer's Disease International World Alzheimer Report launched yesterday on World Alzheimer's Day: Design, Dignity, Dementia: Dementia-related design and the built environment. Our daily series is varied and we hope, relevant, and this topic is critical to the future of dementia care.
Increased awareness had been desperately needed of the potential of good design to improve equal access for people with dementia, and there has been increasing urgent global demand by people living with dementia to see this translated into practice.
The two volumes of the 2020 World Alzheimers Report have brought together the principles and practice, and will be an important resource now and into the future.
The webinar hosted by ADI was extremely well attended, with more than 1100 who registered, and over 600 people from 77 countries who logged in and attended the live event.
An important theme running through the webinar was around dignity - or the lack of dignity accorded to people living with dementia by certain design methods. Panelist Kevin Charras PhD showed a slide of different examples of this, stating: “It’s quite appalling when design relies on stigma and stereotypes of dementia. It turns into furniture that is vintage, colours and contrasts that are exaggerated, and signage that is triple in size, and streets inside buildings, which becomes very confusing.”
Watch the recording of the webinar here:
World Alzheimer Report 2020_Vol1
World Alzheimer Report 2020_Vol2
Kate Swaffer presented at the webinar, and has provided her slides here and speech notes below.
Disability Rights, Enabling Design and Dementia
Kate Swaffer, ADI Webinar, 21 September 2020
Slide 1 – Disability Rights, Enabling Design and Dementia
Thank you to Paola and ADI for launching such a critical report, and congratulations to the report co leads Richard, John and Kirsty for your a very impressive report.
It is very comprehensive, and I’m sure it will become an influential report into the future. Thanks also to Richard for the opportunity to contribute to it.
Slide 2 - Reframing Dementia as a disAbility
The World Health Organisation (WHO) clearly states that dementia is one of the major causes of disability and dependency among older people worldwide and through campaigning at the 2016 WHO Mental Health Forum in Geneva, cognitive disabilities were added as a fourth category under the mental health umbrella. Now that dementia is being described in UN documents as a cognitive disability, we are reminded that people with dementia are fully recognised by the UN as rights bearers under the CRPD treaty.”
In an article I co-authored with Prof. Richard Fleming, Dr Linda Steele and others, we quoted Susan Cahill, who noted, the CRPD ‘allows for a new and exciting dialogue to emerge, where the framing of dementia is no longer characterized by stigma, fear and exclusion, but rather, where the individual with dementia is viewed as a legitimate part of mainstream society’.
Once we accept that ‘dementia is a major cause of disability’ we understand it is a critical reason why it is so important the built environment for people with dementia is accessible, in the same way we provide wheelchair access.
With the rise of a disability rights movement for disabilities caused by any type of dementia, predominantly being led by people with dementia globally, we have come to understand the problem is not with the person with dementia, but about the environment being made accessible.
This of course, includes the physical and built environments.
Disability arises out of the interaction between a person with a health condition, and the environment in which they live and work. A health condition causing disability can include a stroke or a diagnosis of dementia, a long-term health condition such as mental illness, or through losing a limb or another physical function due to an accident.
As this slide shows, we have icons that equate to action, including in most countries, legislation, for most of the more visible disAbilities – it is now time for the invisible disabilities such as sensory or communication disabilities, to be included in building design, and in the way organisations operate.
What use is my wheelchair, if there is no ramp or lift to allow me access?
Similarly, what use is it me going to the bank or supermarket, if the staff can’t communicate with me?
Not to provide equitable access, including through the built environment for everyone is like asking someone without legs to climb a flight of stairs.
Slide 3 - Human and Legal Rights
Even though people with dementia still retain the same rights as anyone else in society, including human rights and disability rights, there has been little change in the realisation of these rights.
A human rights-based approach is about making people aware of their rights, whilst increasing the accountability of individuals and institutions who are responsible for respecting, protecting and fulfilling rights.
The WHO Global Dementia Action Plan for a Public Health Response to Dementia identifies human rights (and specifically the CRPD) as one of three ‘cross-cutting principles’.
The principles included in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol (CRPD) are clear; it is up to us to provide people with any kind of disabilities with the options to make those choices.
We cannot live with dignity, if we are not provided with access to live with dignity and respect.
We cannot participate equally, if we are not provided with the access to do so.
All of these principles are underpinned by the built environment, and our responsibility to ensure access to it, as we do with other disabilities.
The use of these principles allows a design to respond in different ways to people’s needs, preferences, lifestyles, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, as well as the local climate and geography.
No longer can we pick and choose what rights we wish to uphold, or only focus on e.g. rights to dignity or health, which when interpreted do not disrupt the current medicalised approach to dementia;
Disability rights and disability access matters to me; in fact I cannot maintain my independence without it.
I hope they also matter to you.
People with physical disabilities have made major progress as substantial, influential members of society.
Yet we are still being left behind, not only in terms of health and social care, but in terms of recognition and the management of dementia as a condition causing disability and therefore of legislated disability support including enabling and accessible built environments and communities.
What this means is that people with cognitive disabilities caused by dementia are still being denied the most basic access to live independently in their communities.
Slide 4 - The built environment and disability
The environment’s influence in creating disability or in increasing it has been well established and is seen as integral to the definition of disability and is integral to the definition of disability. When the built environment changes, then the experience of someone living with a disability will also change.
The paradigm change introduced many decades ago by the disability rights movement has made modifying the built environment for accessibility commonplace, and in most countries, legislated. We are all so familiar with accommodations for physical disabilities that it is rarely an issue, as accessible bathrooms, guide-dogs, assistive listening systems, or wheelchair ramps are available almost everywhere.
As the image of this wheelchair shows us, even wheelchairs are being made much more accessible than when they were first in use. This is how we must view the built environment too, as we need equitable access for all. We know that most people who have dementia or who are older and require assistance with our daily activities, would prefer to continue to live in their own communities and stay in their homes, and society has a responsibility to ensure equal access as all of its citizens.
Slide 5 – Thank you
We must all work towards ensuring the built environment for people with dementia is accessible.
- We don’t need more reports or more rhetoric.
- What we really need now is ACTION.
Thank you.
Kate Swaffer, MSc, BPsych, BA, Retired nurse
Chair, CEO and co-founder, Dementia Alliance International
Board member, Alzheimer's Disease International
Since you’re here…
… we’re asking readers like you to support our members, by donating to our organizaton.
With more than 50 million people living with dementia, and the Coronavisus pandemic causing everyone to operate in a virtual world, our work has never been more important.
Every contribution, however big or small, is so valuable to our work of supporting people diagnosed with any type of dementia to live more positively, and with a greater sense of hope. Thank you.