Accessibility awareness among architecture students: Design thinking evaluations in Yildiz Technical University

Abstract

Social responsibility of an architect is what an architecture student has to internalize, as the profession is a powerful tool for inclusion 'of all' people. This paper aims to discuss how to integrate 'universal design' to the design thinking of architecture students. As the root of the problem is 'awareness', a method was set to integrate 'accessibility criteria' via raising awareness. A pre-evaluation of accessibility awareness was conducted. After a series of awareness activities, a post-evaluation was made. The findings and results bring many ideas about the ways of raising accessibility awareness among architecture students. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.