Accessibility is Service to Others

Running a one-person household as if you were looking after a large family places certain demands on housing design. However, accessible environmental design comes only after attitudes have been changed. Personally, I was not even aware that I could run my one-person household as if I had a large family until things had matured to the point where I was forced to see the facts in all their simplicity, i.e. to see things from a new perspective. The mental side of accessibility is therefore more important.

We are familiar with the concept of ‘mental disqualification’ in the practice of law, for example when an official is ‘recused’ from a particular task or decision because his or her personal relationships and feelings might compromise impartiality. People’s attitudes and feelings may prevent them from seeing the real world as it is, i.e. that the world is exactly as we make it. What matters is whether we focus on the problems or on the solutions. We do not need to know the deep causes of problems in order to solve them. Of course, finding sustainable solutions often requires that we know the causes of the problems. However, we all have common sense, or intuition, and often all we need to find solutions is to keep eyes open and access our inner knowledge. That is true freedom.

Over 20 years ago, I wrote my diploma thesis on disability policy in the European Union. It was a time when the oligarchs (Zionists) who had fled the Soviet Union in the early 1990s had not yet gained a dominant position in politics of the European Union. In the early 1990s, the EU was still organising a series of competitions between its member states under the Helios action programme in an attempt to find solutions to the problems of people with impairments and disabilities. The action programme, which ran for several years, brought about a publication, which gave guidelines to good practice by presenting successful disability policy projects in different countries. I personally went to Brussels to collect material for my thesis from the unit set up to coordinate the disability policy programme.

After a thorough review of the material, the message was clear: accessible design ensures that everyone can function. Accessible solutions are not just for people with disabilities, they are important for everyone from babies to grandparents. The good practice guide explicitly encourages people with disabilities, people with reduced mobility and common citizens who need (social) services to make their views known. Politicians cannot know whether systems designed to serve citizens are working unless people give feedback. Over the last decades, the leadership of disability and other aid organisations around the world has increasingly been made up of people who are themselves members of the group that the organisation is supposed to help. People no longer rely solely on the views of experts, doctors and nurses. Instead, they have come to rely on peer support and their own intuition.

Bringing up your views is what people consider criticism and many people have a divisive attitude towards criticism. There are examples in history of dictators eliminating dissent by encouraging critics to come forward. Some people demand an apology from people, who put forward their own views ‘too’ strongly. Even our spiritual teachers often remind us that criticism is offensive and a bad thing. But for myself, I have only been offended by criticism when the critic has not told me directly what he or she thinks. Our inner navigator, our higher self, is not offended by anything. It can distinguish between the wheat and the chaff and between a justified criticism and bullying. For what else but bullying is criticism that is only meant to insult. Personally, I wouldn’t even consider a deliberate insult to be criticism. It’s bullying, squabbling of egos.

Either way, the fear of compromising one’s position should not be an obstacle to putting forward one’s own views. Criticism is the basis of all development and cooperation in a 3D world where most people still live within the limits of ego understanding.