L’ergothérapeute, acteur indispensable d’une ville inclusive

Summary :

The quality of social participation of people with disabilities depends on the interaction between their capabilities and obstacles or facilitators that persons face in their environment. Beyond an effort of integration and of regulation applications, the development of society today should be inclusive. Nevertheless, inclusion cannot be standardized in comparison with accessibility. Inclusion is much more than simple access; it is about usage by and with all users. How can designers include a plurality of uses and abilities of future users in their design project without any standards? As well as being the specialist of social participation integration for people with disabilities, occupational therapists can support this design approach thanks to their understanding of usages. We will give two examples of their intervention to describe their role in the development of inclusive projects in urban space. At first, we will describe the involvement of an occupational therapist as part of a design team of outdoor playgrounds manufacturers. In the second example, we will present the role of an occupational therapist serving as an accessibility consultant for community and other affiliated actors. The occupational therapist has a significant role to play in the inclusive city processing. In a virtuous circle, occupational therapist can wear several hats to feed into urban projects on their regular experiments with persons with disabilities, so activating levers of improvement of social participation which, up to then, appeared to remained immobile.

Article rédigé par :

• Camille Pechoux

  Ergothérapeute
  Responsable de l'antenne Rhône-Alpes du CEREMH Vaulx-en-Velin, Rhône (69)
  camille.pechoux@gmail.com

  
  
• Sophie Bretaudeau

  Ergothérapeute au CEREMH
  Désigner de produits
  Vélizy, Yvelines (78)
  bretaudeausophie@gmail.com