Disability, Mobility and Space ― Understanding Access Through the Embodied Experience of Women Wheelchair Users

Disabled people’s mobility, movement and access into and around the built environment is often constrained by physical and socio-attitudinal barriers. Based upon first-hand research studying the daily mobility and movement of female wheelchair users in different urban environments in England, this book explores issues relating to disabled people’s access needs as well as the different contexts within which their mobility is shaped. It develops an understanding that destabilises the common-sense conception of access as solely a physical matter and incorporates social, psycho-emotional and corporeal dimensions in developing a broader conceptions of disability and mobility. Examining the interrelationships between technology and impairment as well as strategies of resistance deployed by disabled people to ensure access to urban spaces and places, the author exposes the challenges the built environment can present to the movement and mobility of disabled people and asks how we can overcome these challenges in order to make the environment more conducive to independent mobility.