Purple pounds: Designing for the deaf and disabled

The spending power of disabled people, known as the purple pound, is £300bn: "Hello, does that not tell you something?" says Amanprit Arnold, a deaf city and disability urban strategist passionate about creating an accessible city for everyone. "It’s not charity. There’s a commercial return to inclusive design."

 

Born deaf, Arnold is a visionary built environment changemaker renowned for her expertise and commitment to inclusivity. In this interview, Arnold speaks about belonging, the growing role for technology and AI in enabling inclusive participation in city life and citymaking and her vision for a Deaf City Hub in London for the global deaf community – a conference centre, theatre and co-working space.

To make this episode more accessible, a video of this interview with Arnold signing in BSL has been included with captions and a transcript of the conversation is shared below. The transcript has been edited for legibility.

 

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Christine Murray: Hello and welcome to the Developer Podcast, where we talk about how to make cities worth living in, which often has to do with the spaces between the buildings as much as the buildings themselves. My name is Christine Murray, editor-in-chief of The Developer and director of the Festival of Place.

Designing inclusive cities often means considering our blind spots, but what about our deaf spots? How can we consider the impact of the built environment on deaf people in the city?

 

Amanprit Arnold is an experienced deaf city strategist with a focus on inclusive design, disability inclusion and social impact. Born deaf and having discovered her strong deaf identity in her teens, Amanprit joins me today to talk about how we can take a more enlightened approach to designing places.

 

Welcome to the Developer Podcast. Please tell me about you, who you are and what you do.

 

Amanprit Arnold: Thank you, Christine, for having me here today and the opportunity to tell you more about me, my practice, my thinking. My name is Amanprit Arnold, I am profoundly deaf – born deaf – A BSL (British Sign Language) user, grown up in the deaf community, but came into the built environment sector through my job at RICS (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) and have been working in the environment sector for the past 15 years.

 

Christine Murray: So I know you’ve spoken with me about your experience, beginning at RICS, you went on to work at Urban Land Institute, and you’ve moved on to start your own consultancy… Tell me a little bit about your professional journey and where you’re at now.

 

Amanprit Arnold: I’ll try and summarise it and quite quickly. I started my career at the RICS and for about five years I was delivering global urban research projects and global academic conferences for surveyors. I did a lot of travel.

 

I moved to the Urban Land Institute for about five years delivering research in Europe as well as looking to grow the European advisory services in Europe. There, I was able to go to different cities around the world and bring the best urban experts together for one week to tackle an urban development or land use challenge, so that was really fascinating because every city is different, everybody had a different professional background and people had a different perspectives on what makes a city or place work.

 

At the same time, I was doing a lot of research and thought leadership on urban issues in the sector. At that time, I’m not sure now, most of the members were European real estate investors and developers. So for them, it was all about what was interesting to them, what trends, what to invest in next.

 

Then I moved to the public sector working for GLA, the Greater London Authority, for the Mayor of London. And I actually really loved that transition, to go from international to local, even though it’s a global city. It gave me a fresh perspective that at the end of the day, it’s about people. It’s about London delivering places for Londoners and bringing in that people perspective.

 

Christine Murray: So, in your most recent role at GLA, what were you working on there?

 

Amanprit Arnold: I came to the GLA via Public Practice, a brokerage agency that is designed to attract candidates from the private sector into the public sector.

 

I was inspired by my former boss, Elizabeth Rapoport, who did it herself. I was very self-conscious about the fact that it was focussed on the architectural sector. I was questioning myself – what can I bring? Most of the cohort are architects, I’m not an architect. But, with her encouragement and support, I applied to Public Practice and was matched with a unit at the GLA called the infrastructure team.

 

The infrastructure team was specifically focused on utilities: Energy, water… And around that time, I think it was 2021, everybody kept talking about decarbonisation, net zero. So to hear about this utility sector, completely unknown to me and how you make a city net zero, because all of this stuff is happening underground.

 

We talk about placemaking that happening above, but nobody really talks about what keep a city functioning. All the lights, the gas, electric, water, all of that adds up to a city becoming net zero or carbon-friendly. So I moved into there, in the policy team, worked here for about two years and worked with the Mayor of London infrastructure group to try and do partnership working and have a dig-once approach.

 

Then I moved to the regeneration team, with my Property X-Change hat on, bringing my former property, real estate sector experience to that and trying to raise awareness around diverse high streets in London and why we need them.

 

We also wanted to learn from real estate: What are you doing? What stories do you have? But I also appreciate that the public sector is doing great things, and people were more interested in what we were doing at the time.

 

Moving on, I looked at women and girls, gender inclusive experience. So I was involved in inclusive design. And those opportunities for me to participate in inclusive design is linked to what I’m doing now, which is disability urban strategy.

 

Christine Murray:  So what were you seeing that led you to set up your consultancy on disability urban strategy? Was it a lack of expertise or understanding within the professional sector, or a gap in the built environment itself?

 

Amanprit Arnold: I think it was around Covid, when everybody was thinking about health and was seeing disability in a completely different light. Everybody felt vulnerable at that point. There was a lot more talk about EDI, the Black Lives Matter movement, all of that. It just made me look at the city...

 

I grew up in the deaf community. I went to a deaf boarding school. My friends and network are deaf. I’m a vice chair of a charity called SignHealth that aims to address health inequalities for deaf people, which means accessing the health system, accessing NHS…. We can’t call. So how do you access it? Innovation comes from that. SignHealth partners with a BSL virtual relay service where deaf people can call this BSL 999. You call them and the interpreter will call the hospital for you. So that’s an inequality that deaf people experience.

 

That was all happening, and then Rose Ayling-Ellis was on Strictly Come Dancing and the media profile… and I’m thinking, “This is my community, I know these people.” But we just don’t get the opportunity to really share our expertise and lived experience. So I thought, hang on a minute, what could I do for the built environment?

 

Christine Murray: What are some of the considerations for the deaf community for the built environment? What is your lens on that?

 

Aminprit Arnold: Yes. You need to design and co-engage with people to make a place inclusive. But there’s more you can do. It’s about using technology to make a place inclusive. It’s about inclusive communication so that people are aware how to arrive at a destination through information.

 

It doesn’t necessarily have to be design. Inclusive design is a very important part of it. Inclusive engagement is an important part of it. But you can be creative. I mean, like for example, I think a lot of people may not realise it that FaceTime on Apple iPhone was initially designed for deaf people to communicate, but everybody’s using it.

 

Before when I started my career, when I had to do conference calls. I had to do captions. There were no video calls, there were no captions. But having that accessible technology makes the workplace more inclusive for me.

 

When I was at the GLA, I was also the co-chair of the disability network. We have fantastic senior leadership prioritising this within the organisation. In London, it’s like 1.2 million people that are disabled, which is about 15% of the population. I think it’s higher. But I’m going somewhere with this.

 

Internally within the organisation, the staff reporting showed officially on the HR system, 9% of people disclosed that they were disabled. Within the space of a year with a lot of awareness raising, me stepping up into co-chair with my other two co-chairs who had autism and another was a parent with a child who had ADHD, autism.

 

Within that year, we did a staff survey and 75% of the organisation filled in that survey. In the results, 19% of people disclosed that they were disabled. That’s within one year, [from 9% to 19%] and that’s not everybody and some people may not even realise that they experience a barrier, or they’re not aware of it.

 

For example, neurodiversity, when you look at that, there’s been a lot of awareness around that lately, which is why while I was co-chair at the Disability Network, we set up this neurodiversity subgroup because they wanted a safe space for them as well.

 

My personal definition, and I think it’s also the right definition online, is that disability is something that is a barrier that a person experiences in their everyday living. It affects their everyday living. It could be temporary. It could be permanent. It could be that you’ve broken a leg and that is temporary. It could be mental health, which is, temporary or permanent, depending on the situation at that time.

 

But everybody experiences disability, if it’s not themselves they’ll know somebody, jave taken them to a place – a wheelchair user. Or what about mums with buggies and prams?

 

Throughout the last three years I’ve had opportunity to contribute my thoughts and thinking on lots of steering groups, one with the architectural sector, most recently with the Crown Estate and Grosvenor, who’ve just launched an inclusive spaces and places commitment last November. They did a lot of work around this and they did a launch and I was on the panel, but some of the learning from there is fascinating.

 

I share this with people: We talk about high streets, footfall, revenue, expenditure… The spending power for the “Black pound”, UK ethnic minorities, is 5bn. For the LGBTQ+ community, the spending power is £6bn which is called the “Pink pound”. The spending power for disabled people is £300bn, and that’s the “Purple pound. Hello? Does that not tell you something? And yet we don’t discuss it at all.

 

Christine Murray: You’re right. I’ve heard about the pink pound. I’ve never heard about the purple pound.

 

Amanprit Arnold: Yeah, it’s a massive market. And we’re only aware of the built environment sector. There’s culture, art, theatre, media – accessibility for events. If disabled people can access a place then they will go and they will spend their money, but it’s not really thought about that way.

 

Christine Murray: I mean, you talk about this moment of disability, it can be a temporary thing. And of course, and my principal experience is around having children, especially when I had multiple kids, and I had one in a sling and one in a buggy. I remember walking down the high street and someone saying, “Oh, have you gone to this new breakfast place? It’s really great. And I said no, it has two steps in and a sharp right turn. I’m not going to go there because it’s just too hard to get in. And that was a temporary situation, but it was an example for me of feeling like they don’t want my money, they don’t want me in there because there’s just a physical barrier that I can’t cross.

 

Amanprit Arnold: You’re absolutely right. For me, as a deaf person, I can go to lots of places, but I would rather go to a place with my deaf friends if it’s bright. Not too bright, so that it feels clinical, but a bright enough place where I can see people well. I can hear well, I’ve got a cochlear implant. But it’s just easier for me to follow conversations. I just feel more relaxed and will have a more enjoyable experience out if I’m in a place that is accessible to me and inclusive.

 

Accessibility is very important, but I’m trying to convey that into creating an inclusive environment for everyone. It’s about inclusive design, but also creating an inclusive environment through other methods.

 

Christine Murray: You talk about how technology can make a place inclusive. Lately there’s been a lot of discussion about how AI can be non-inclusive. I’m thinking about AI creating images or text for the average person, which usually means not considering or representing disabled people. Yet, you’re presenting technology as a great enabler as well. What is your perspective. Are we at a crossroads right now in terms of our use of technology and how do we use it, as you said, to enable greater accessibility and inclusivity?

 

Amanprit Arnold: It’s a great question.  AI is scary and it is scary what’s happening in the world. I get that. But for me, I have found it quite helpful. Because as a deaf person, even though English is my first language, I still prefer to do BSL (British Sign Language). Obviously, early in my career, when I’ll be editing and managing long, dense reports I felt it took me longer to digest. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I was quick. But I was self-conscious, as a deaf person coming into the workplace, about whether I was on par with my hearing peers. But AI can summarise it very quickly, clearly, concisely. But in the built environment, from a disability perspective, I don’t know – I’m learning.

 

I know for a fact, just one example, to be able to book interpreters, there aren’t that many of them and the demand for them is really high. To try and be smart about it, I can get an interpreter through a virtual relay service online quickly, but there’s still not enough of them. So there’s a new thing coming out of the University of Surrey to try and do sign language on AI. It’s completely wow. You can put text into this box online and it will come up with a person signing exactly what that text says. But that’s BSL (British Sign Language), it’s not American Sign Language, French, Irish… people thinking sign language is one, it’s not, there’s several all over the world. We do have International Sign Language that’s universal, and some deaf people are able to communicate through universal sign language.

 

It’s quite fascinating. That’s why I think when it comes to inclusive design and accessible design, there’s more we can do. There should be universal design.

 

The other thing I wanted to share was that my very good friend Christopher Lang, who is a deaf architect. He set up Deaf Architecture Front to campaign and raise awareness around making architectural education accessible. What that means is that he created architectural sign language, rather than getting the interpreter to spell everything out, because that slows everything down. So he partnered up to create architectural sign language and taught interpreters and people at university.

 

Through his research with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) he discovered that of qualified architects, only 1% are disabled and within that 1% to 0.2% are deaf. So why are we not encouraging and welcoming more disabled architects to create environment that are more inclusive? He’s also campaigning to allow architects to do their examinations in BSL because English is not his first language. Yeah it’s amazing. He’s an amazing inspirational guy.

 

Christine Murray:  What are the barriers in the built environment –  you’ve mentioned this very clear language barrier of having to spell out ‘architrave’ or whatever words that you need as an architect. Is there also continuing discrimination that is preventing   deaf access to built environment professions?

 

Amanprit Arnold: I mean, I don’t want to speak on behalf of all deaf people.

 

Christine Murray:  And I don’t want to ask you to do that.

 

Amanprit Arnold: Everyone experiences it differently, but I’m in the deaf community, I’m aware of people who were architects, who were surveyors, who were engineers, every key profession you could think of in the built environment about 40 years ago but they all left the industry, because they didn’t feel it was accessible. Maybe they experienced discrimination because they can’t speak well, or there wasn’t accessible support packages. There wasn’t technology, they couldn’t call, there was no email. The world is very different now to 40 years ago, but they all left the profession and went on to do other amazing things.

 

It’s not just within the built environment sector, but there are people out there in different sectors who enter a field and if it’s not welcoming or accessible or depending on the individual person and their own experiences, some of them leave. Sometimes people just want to move careers as well.

 

I feel now at a point where I absolutely love what I do. I’ve always loved the built environment, citymaking, I’ve loved it, but I did want to hang out with my deaf community sector, charities, commercial, all of that, so I feel like now is the perfect time for me to be able to do both.

 

Christine Murray:  That brings us naturally to talk about the Deaf City Hub, which is a project that you’re working on, a longer term project. You’re in the early stages. What is a deaf city hub where did this idea came from?

 

Amanprit Arnold: I came up with the Deaf City Hub idea in about May 2023. I was working on Property X-Change and I saw a gap. In the global city, where do we belong in the city. Do we have a space? You’ve got LGBTQ+ they’ve got Soho, they’ve got Vauxhall, they’ve got Brixton, they’ve got their bars. It’s the same with Faith community. They’ve got their churches. With the deaf community, we had deaf clubs that were not fit for purpose and being sold off to keep charity going. So I was like, where do we belong in the city?

 

So I came up with this idea and, it’s very early stages, but essentially it is a world-leading, mixed-use, cultural, innovative hub for the deaf community because we need a space like this. There are so many different sectors, from the deaf arts needing an accessible theatre, deaf media needs accessible studio rooms. They don’t want to have to explain everything. They just want to be able to go to a place and for it to be completely seamless and frictionless. In a theatre or a conference room, it’s often flat. But imagine if it was at a slight angle. Deaf people from all over the world could go there.

 

Well, this idea came up and I held a co-design stakeholder workshop with the at the of the CEO of the deaf charity sector, education, employment and health. I brought them together, told them my idea and they loved it.  They absolutely loved it. Actually it’s in their strategy. They need a place like this. It all links up. But it’s also a home for everybody to come together. It’s also like a deaf WeWork type of space.

 

Now it’s not just going to be closed off to us. It’s also open for other people to learn. For example, the government have introduced a GCSE for BSL, the number of interpreters is really small, so if we can get more, we can create a learning hub. I don’t know, the sky is the limit, this is my big idea and vision.

 

I’m now going to a point where I’m trying to think this through gently and be a bit more strategic about it. It’s a five year passion project, and I’m feeling quite excited and positive about it.

 

Christine Murray: Does this exist anywhere in the world of you’ve found anything else like that? Because it does sound like a really powerful demonstrator project for so many places. If they could come and see this done well in terms of conference facility and the venue and the way that it that it would work.

 

Amanprit Arnold:  Yeah, absolutely. So of course, my deaf community are really excited about it and I’m like hang on a minute, at the same time, we can do this to demonstrate best practice on a global model for people around the world to see. Not just for deaf people, but for disability, property, for design engineering. Imagine working with a tech company to make it inclusive. To have a ringing doorbell with a video, not just sorry, I can’t get in because you can’t hear the door buzz.

 

There are deaf clubs. There is a deaf university in America – that’s the only deaf university in the world. And that’s how the deaf space principle was born by a hearing architect who collaborated with deaf students and Hansel Baumann.

 

So you’ve got the university, you have the odd deaf school, you have maybe a deaf café, but nothing like the what I’m thinking of.

 

Christine Murray: This is so much more than that, a theatre, a conference facility, a WeWork. It sounds like a properly inclusive piece of city and for grown ups, not just students, and also welcoming other people in, encouraging open-door, cross cultural communication and mixing.

 

Amanprit Arnold: I’ve been asked, why can we make it a disability hub? And I said absolutely. But there’s a cultural aspect. The other thing I wanted to mention was that I went to a deaf boarding school and honestly, that saved me. It really did. Because I was  with peers like me, the teachers were very well trained and professional.

 

It wasn’t just about the education, it was about my identity and my self-esteem, and having peers like me. I was exposed to that world when I was 11, but from a built environment perspective I was just like, hang on a minute, if the Department of Education is willing to pay for these special education environment tailored for all the children, and I put that money in them up until the age of 18.

 

I mean, did you know that the government put 1.6 billion into special education per year. And apparently it’s increasing, but it’s not enough. But where do we go after 18? It is like a cliff edge. So that’s why I’m very, passionate about how we need to do more in the built environment to create spaces that are accessible and inclusive to people.

 

Christine Murray: You’ve asked, “Where do we belong in the city.” All kinds of people are seeking to belong in the city. How do we create these cities of belonging?

I find that a really important, statement because I’ve always felt that cities are somewhere people should belong: When you go to a big city, you should be able to find a pocket of belonging. I feel like the Deaf City Hub could be a really beautiful, compelling and exciting part of providing that pocket of belonging. So what is next for you?

 

Amanprit Arnold:  Right. And by the way, it is quite scary right now, but we’ve been here before. I’m talking about years ago, way before Black Lives Matter. Events happen, you go forward by two steps and then you go backwards three steps. To me, history repeats itself in a very different way. But as long as we remain committed to what we believe in and trust the process, there will be another event that will come along that will shape the way we think. Nothing is permanent.

 

As for me, my consultancy is disability urban strategy. In a nutshell that means I bring disability inclusion to citymaking and urban development. That can be interpreted in a number of ways, but my main aim is to try and get people to think differently about inclusive design. Accessibility is important, but you can expand beyond that. Use technology, use partnership working, use innovative ideas, use creative communications that don’t cost that much to make an environment inclusive.

 

And at the same time, I am also trying to demonstrate that there’s the 300bn purple pound. The Department of Education spending 1.6 billion into special education schools per year. Doing things for people with a disability is not charity, there’s a commercial return for you. You just don’t see it. Tech companies are doing inclusive things. Media are going inclusive things. There is a commercial return. Now I don’t want to commercialise it, but I am trying to get people to think like that.

 

Christine Murray: So, it just makes sense.

 

Amanprit Arnold: Yeah, but I don’t think anybody has thought or just said it like that.

 

Christine Murray: I think we got stuck at ramps. We got stuck at the built manifestations of accessibility. What you’re talking about seems to move beyond that to a wider definition of accessibility.

 

Amanprit Arnold: And also, accessible design doesn’t’ have to be ugly, there’s just not enough of a bigger market to increase demand and supply for bueatiful ramps and amazing bathrooms and the right braille on the wall. You need to be engaging wit hteh disabled community because they have solutions. People are innovating, but you can innovate more with them.

 

Christine Murray: Well, it’s been a fascinating conversation. I want to thank you for your contribution and for bringing all of this enlightenment and understanding to us and also helping me to make this podcast more inclusive as well. So, so thank you so much for that and for everything that you do.

 

Amanprit Arnold: Thank you for inviting me. And it’s been a real pleasure talking to you.