Responsiveness concept: Accessibility as means, participation as purpose

Despite the legal requirements, many buildings and services, even recent ones, does not meet the needs of people with disabilities. By involving an association of people with disabilities, the analysis of the difficulties encountered in adapting both a new building and an old building to the needs of people with disabilities reveals that the notions of standards and accessibility do not allow the participation of persons with disabilities. To better take into account the demands of people with disabilities, this publication proposes to clearly separate the purpose of accessibility from the means used, by introducing the notion of "responsiveness". From an interactionist perspective, responsiveness is the ability of an environment to respond to the human demand for participation. Indeed, improving the social participation of people with disabilities involves verifying whether the environment actually meets their demands. (C) 2018 Association ALTER. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.