Overview
Accessibility is often treated as an add-on — a fix, a checklist, a version for someone else. This series begins somewhere quieter. Each story starts with a small difficulty: a train missed because no one spoke, a form too long for a tired hand, a floating button that never introduces itself. These are not failures of compliance, they are moments of absence, where design forgets to expect difference.
Each piece in this series corresponds to one of the seven Universal Design Principles, but the writing avoids abstraction or prescription. The stories are fictional but rooted in lived experience. They follow a person, not a persona, as they try to move through a system, a space, or a service. The goal is not to solve, but to notice: where comfort frays, where options vanish, where rhythm breaks.
Approach
The stories follow the Story-Mountain structure (beginning, build-up, tension, resolution, ending) but are retitled to hold a more poetic flow. Though each principle is grounded in Ronald Mace’s work at North Carolina State University, the tone is interpretive rather than instructional. Design is shown as affect, not just layout. Access as climate, not just rule.
Artist references, including Shirin Neshat, Joseph Beuys, and Tadao Ando, are not named within the texts, but shape their sensibility. The language of each piece remains minimal, reflective, and observant. The stories invite you to read slowly, and perhaps to re-read — not to look for solutions, but to recognise what good design allows: not just entry, but ease. Not just clarity, but choice. Not just access, but arrival.