Interdisciplinary Cooperation in Technical, Medical, and Social Sciences: A Focus on Creating Accessibility

Abstract

Accessibility and Universal Design (UD) is an area of professional interest for architects and occupational therapists, but college curricula rarely include both broader and collaborative education in this area. This article presents the experience of the inter-university, interdisciplinary project “Joint Architecture Initiative” (JAI), with the participation of students from the University of Science and Technology, University of Health and Sport Science, and Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw (Poland). The JAI project is a response of the university community of Wroclaw to the social-urban campaign “Life Without Barriers” and the needs of residents—the elderly and people with disabilities—for adaptation and modification of housing. The paper presents the theoretical background of the problem, the stages of implementation of the JAI project from the perspective of the model—human–environment–occupation—the tasks of project team members, and the justification for the need to create interdisciplinary teams from the area of technical and health sciences, with particular emphasis on occupational therapy practice (OTP).

Influence of Psychological Factors on Participation and Life Satisfaction in the Context of Travel and Tourism after Spinal Cord Injury

“…A major obstacle to participation for people with disabilities is their common perception of travel failures as being inevitable [15]. While studies have analyzed the inaccessible service and environmental barriers affecting the travel decisions of people with disability [16,17], constraint theory further suggests that unless their psychological inhibitors (i.e., hesitation or fear of failures) are resolved [18], they will not be in the position to experience objective environmental inhibitors (i.e., architectural barriers or lack of adapted transportation). In such cases, improving the objective physical travel settings will not necessarily trigger their travel motivation [19].…”