This book is available in audio format for people with visual impairments.

The politics of accessibility in design are ever evolving, but the question remains: what if current perspectives fail to adequately engage people with disabilities in shaping the built environment? Take Hunters Point Library in Queens, New York, for example, which opened its doors to the public less than four years ago with a major design flaw: entire rows of book stacks in its atrium were inaccessible to mobility-challenged patrons. Now the library is the subject of a $10 million lawsuit by the city against its designer, Steven Holl Architects. Architecture’s relationship to ableism, that is, discrimination (intentional or otherwise) in favor of able-bodied people, has long been taken up by David Gissen, designer and professor of architecture at Parsons School of Design | The New School. His latest book, The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access, adroitly challenges architectural paradigms in a bid to place disabled bodies front and center within the Western canon.