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| General Principles
of Universal Design Policy |
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| I. Present
state and challenges |
2. Challenges to be overcome to achieve universal design
In order to construct a society
in which all people can exercise their individuality and their capabilities
and participate fully in that society to achieve self-actualization, it
is important to adopt the perspectives of "fairness," that means
not discriminating between users, "freedom of choice (flexibility)"
that permits flexible satisfaction of individual needs, and "participation"
that encourages planning with the participation of users and residents,
based on the concept of universal design: designing facilities that are
"easily and freely used anywhere, by anyone".
It is necessary to establish a process of staged and continued
development and to strive to achieve a "more universal social environment"
from a variety of perspectives (spiral up *5) by sharing knowledge that
has been obtained and reflecting this knowledge in future measures.
A review of measures taken by the MLIT based on such concepts
has revealed the following challenges.
Because measures to achieve a barrier free society have, until
now, focused on removing barriers to the movement of elderly and handicapped
people in particular, not enough has been done to consider use by a variety
of types of people.
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Measures to remove barriers to elderly
and handicapped people have not considered a wide range of users including
mentally handicapped and mentally ill people, foreigners, children,
and adults with children. |
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Because measures to remove barriers have
been taken independently at each facility, continuity at connections
between facilities has not been ensured or barrier free measures have
been limited to parts of the living environment centered on travel
facilities. |
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With the priority on physical measures
at facilities, support systems integrating physical and non-physical
measures have not been taken and measures to provide information and
remove psychological barriers have been inadequate. |
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The elimination of barriers in newly constructed
facilities through legal requirements has progressed, and at the far
more numerous existing facilities, a certain degree of progress has
been made, but overall, measures have been inadequate. |
A comprehensive survey of national land and transportation administration
has revealed not only these problems with efforts to remove barriers; but
a number of problems related to public transportation and city planning.
In the public transportation sector, adequate measures to link
different transportation companies and to provide information have not necessarily
been taken, and the framework of past polices concerning the introduction
of new public transportation services does not necessarily guarantee the
ability to effectively take barrier-free measures.
It is difficult to implement city planning that guarantees services
that users require and people remain susceptible to disasters, because of
the deterioration of city centers and the great distance from city centers
to residential districts.
And processes permitting the staged and continuous implementation
of measures from varied perspectives have not always been established. |
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| *5 |
Spiral up: It is a staged
and continuous process in which users and residents participate actively
from the preliminary study stage to the post-project evaluation stage
and share knowledge obtained through their participation process to
apply it to other projects. |
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