Access Intimacy

I was recently made aware of the term “access intimacy,” which refers to a mode of relation between disabled people or between disabled and non-disabled people that concerns the feeling of someone genuinely understanding and anticipating another’s access needs. Simply put, by Mia Mingus, a writer, educator and community organizer who identifies as as a queer physically disabled woman of color, access intimacy is “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs.”

While I created my Universal Design shop to be an awareness campaign, it is also an ongoing learning experience for myself as I become more and more interested in the history and future of our designed space. I wanted to share this term as an extension and realization that there is more to it than universal design. It needs to be inclusive design that allows for the experience of access intimacy. New shop designs are in the works, based on this notion :)