The Politics of Inaccessibility

Inaccessible urban design is not neutral, it is political. From narrow sidewalks to heavy manual doors, a city is designed for the “normante” of a human body with no disability and enough youth strength to walk long distances without rest. That is, architecture encodes social hierarchies into a city - it is the physical manifestation of social exclusion, particularly toward those whose bodies do not fit into the majority of the population bell curve.

Who has power and who doesn’t?

One of the world’s greatest political philosophers, Michel Foucault, suggested in his book Discipline and Punish: the architecture design of Western civilisation in the modern age uses spatial partitioning to separate society into smaller, knowable units. Classrooms divide students based on their performance, and ladders in a corporate building represent power hierarchy between employees. But then, what about inaccessible architecture?

The mere lack of such physical support for people with disabilities demonstrates how they are naturally left out of society.

When ramps, elevators, or tactile paving are absent, people with disabilities are not simply inconvenienced - they are rendered invisible to the very spaces where social, economic, and political activities take place. This exclusion, therefore, is not neutral: it signals which bodies are considered “normal” and worthy of accommodation, and which are treated as peripheral.

“The normal body” as a social construct

Famous cultural theorist Rosemarie Garland-Thomson emphasised: the traditional approach to disability is medical - meaning that a person’s disability is culturally seen as “problems” that need to be fixed. She argued that as a society, we have a cultural figure of a normal person - mainly white, male and able-bodied. And as society is structured around this default, disabled people are marginalised because they deviate from this “ideal”.

In his influential essay “Enforcing Normalcy” (1995), Lennard J. Davis argued that this normality is not a natural state of a human being, but rather, a statistical invention of the 19th century. Realistically, everyone will eventually have to exit the majority of the bell curve, as they age, as their legs start to hurt, and as their vision starts to blur.

On the optimistic side, the world has changed profoundly since the 19th century. History has made visible the devastating consequences of discriminating against a group of people on the basis of race, gender or bodily differences - and through that we have developed more profound empathy. As a society, our cultural capacity to acknowledge and criticise unfairness has grown. At EnAccess Maps, we aspire to represent and carry forward this indomitable spirit.

What could we do?

Although necessary, theoretical advocacy is aspirational rather than actionable. Our realisation of the politics of inaccessibility allows us to identify the inequity of this world. We have taken the first step.

Structural changes take time - a new city cannot be rebuilt in our foreseeable future. However, we can take advantage of what is available by mapping out the accessible places in our city. At EnAccess Maps, we gather community-driven reviews to provide practical information on the accessibility, or lack thereof, of venues in the public space.

This simple act of documentation does two things at once: it provides guidance for people with disabilities navigating daily life, and it exposes the gaps where accessibility is absent. Our website functions as a public repository of these data - an open archive that reminds us how exclusion is not accidental, but patterned and therefore open to critique.

Through this act, we contribute to civic power, transform lived experience into collective knowledge, and collective knowledge into leverage for change.

EnAccess Maps also works closely with councils, including Maribyrnong and Merri-bek, to advocate for institutional changes. Political theorists often argue that recognition precedes redistribution: an issue must first be rendered visible within the structures of governance before material resources are mobilised to address them. Our maps - presented to councils, function as an instrument for recognition.

Walk with us and start mapping today! To chart, uncover and contest accessibility is to insist that the city belongs to everyone!