Taps and toilets

Accessible water supply and sanitation

Disabled people have the least access to water and sanitation services, which adds to their isolation, poor health and poverty. It also contravenes a basic human right to safe water. Service providers are starting to recognise that the Millennium Development Goals of access to safe water and sanitation, health and poverty reduction will not be met unless disabled people are included.

Angela Martin

Recent research by the Water, Engineering Development Centre (WEDC) at Loughborough University in the UK focuses on documenting examples of improvements in practice - what helps disabled people in rural and poor urban areas to access and use water and sanitation facilities. Information was collected from a range of countries, and fieldwork carried out in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Uganda.

Key findings included:

• Few service providers have thought about disabled people in relation to their work. They lack training, skills and information about making services and facilities more accessible and inclusive.
• Demand-responsive approaches rarely consult disabled people and fail to deliver accessible services. Project design and consultation processes do not consider disabled people.
• Providers assume that there is no demand, but in fact most disabled people do not know that accessible facilities are even possible, let alone how to express demand for them.
• Simple low-cost solutions can make a great difference to the lives of disabled people and their families. Yet these initiatives remain small-scale and isolated, and information about them is not widely shared.
• Some of the greatest obstacles faced by disabled people in accessing sanitation and water supply are to do with the physical environment (such as steps, slippery areas around hand-pumps, rough access paths).

Improving disabled people's access to and use of water in the home can benefit individuals by restoring their dignity, improving their self-reliance and social integration. It also benefits the whole family, reducing their workload and releasing valuable time for other activities.

Some major water and sanitation providers are starting to consider how to include disability issues at policy and strategy level. Wateraid Bangladesh for example, is supporting local partner organisations to consider how their projects will address the needs of disabled people. WEDC's research will be produced and shared in the form of a resource book, aimed at WATSAN planners and service providers, disabled people's organisations, and disability service providers. It contains a range of ideas to help implementers make their services and facilities more accessible and inclusive.

Finding ways to improve access for disabled people will require:

• building on the knowledge and skills of service providers
• making facilities more inclusive to ensure equal access: services must be designed to take into account different needs, which often involve only minor adjustments, and little extra cost, especially if planned from the outset
• piloting approaches and technologies, to demonstrate and learn what works and can be applied in different contexts
• building the capacity of disabled people's organisations to lobby service providers for access and inclusion
• collaborating with disabled people, who understand their own needs best.

Designing facilities to be inclusive also benefits other community members. All kinds of people, including frail elderly people, pregnant women, parents with small children, injured or sick people and those who may have difficulty with balance or co-ordination, with weak grip, limited flexibility, difficulties squatting or lifting, will benefit from better access to appropriate water and sanitation facilities.

Hazel Jones
Water Engineering Development Centre
Loughborough University
Leicestershire LE11 3TU
UK
H.E.Jones2@lboro.ac.uk
T +44 (0)150 922 8303
F +44(0)150 921 1079

See also

Water and Sanitation for Disabled People and other Vulnerable Groups: designing services to improve accessibility, a resource book by Hazel Jones & Bob Reed, WEDC, Loughborough University, UK (forthcoming July 2005)

Why should the water and sanitation sector consider disabled people, WELL Briefing Note 12, 2005, www.lboro.ac.uk/well/

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