Inclusive by co-design

More than a minimum standard

Accessible bathroom design in Australia is guided by minimum compliance requirements. The problem is that minimums tend to become defaults: designers build around them and funding is often allocated accordingly. 

And while standards have evolved over time, many accessible bathroom provisions still reflect spatial assumptions and wheelchair models developed from research in the 1970s and 1980s. Those standards were built around a narrow range of body measurements and excluded power wheelchair users entirely.

Professor Sidney Newton, then at UTS's Faculty of Design and Society, had been thinking about this when Mark Relf of Accessibility Solutions approached him wanting to push for improvements. Newton brought in Professor Simon Darcy from the UTS Business School, whose work focuses on disability and inclusive design, and Professor Phillippa Carnemolla from the Faculty of Design and Society, whose research explores how the built environment shapes independence for people with disability.  

Together with industry partners experienced with the Australian Standards Committee for Access and Mobility, and collaborators from Physical Disability Council of NSW and Spinal Cord Injuries Australia, the team set out to build robust, up-to-date evidence grounded in lived experience. 

Research based on lived experience

From the beginning, one thing was non-negotiable: the people who actually use these spaces had to shape the research. That commitment carried through every stage, from co-designing the research instruments and recruiting a co-researcher with disability, to conducting fieldwork in locations approved by all participants. The project began with a survey to better understand the broad challenges wheelchair users face in accessible public bathrooms, before taking those insights into real-world settings to see how those challenges played out in practice. 

Survey questions were written collaboratively with wheelchair users and pilot tested by 20 participants and stakeholders. Of the 209 respondents, 94% had a disability, while 6% were significant others such as carers or parents responding on their behalf. 

Participants were diverse, ranging in age from their 20s to over 80, with needs spanning fully independent to very high support requirements. Many used more than one mobility aid: 60% used power wheelchairs and 55% manual wheelchairs, alongside scooters, walking frames and lower limb prosthetics. 

Clear patterns emerged. Participants with higher support needs consistently required more space, while older participants placed greater importance on grab rails, particularly those also using walking frames. The findings revealed a key issue: current standards fail to reflect the diversity of real-world needs. 

“For too many years, experts designed what they thought people with disability needed without input from the people they were designing for,” says Darcy.

From pilot to lasting change

This project began as a pilot, building early evidence to support the broader research needed to improve Australia’s accessible bathroom standards. With further investment, the work could help shape building codes, design practice and the way accessibility is approached – placing lived experience more firmly at the centre. 

But the implications go beyond public bathrooms. 

The portable lab opens new ways to understand how people interact with the built environment more broadly. Home bathrooms could be a natural next step, particularly given how little research exists into the spaces where many older Australians and people with disability spend much of their time. 

This approach could also be applied across other parts of the home, as well as hospitals, schools, aged care settings and public spaces. 

A bathroom can meet every standard on paper and still not work for the person using it. For some, these spaces may always require planning. But better design, shaped by lived experience, can ease that burden and support greater independence, safety and dignity.