An accessible and user-friendly built environment is an enabler for people to get to education, to work or to social life, and it plays an important role in building an inclusive society.
What is Accessibility and Universal Design?
Universal Design (UD) refers to “design-for-all”. It is the design of products and environment to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialised design.
Barrier-free ramps, braille and tactile signage, elderly-friendly toilets and lactation rooms are examples of accessible and universal design features that caters to a diverse group of visitors such as persons with disability (PWDs), families with young children and elderly.
Making our Built Environment more accessible and user-friendly
We have put in place different initiatives and collaboration to make our built environment more accessible and user-friendly. Find out more below.
Partnering the Community and Stakeholders
Accessible City Network
We have been working closely with the community and other government agencies to collectively identify issues, prioritise and co-create solutions to enhance the accessibility of public spaces. There are currently community partnerships in the Raffles Place precinct and Boon Lay, with another partnership in Nee Soon to be set up.
We invite interested members of the public to
join us on this collaborative effort to make Singapore a more accessible and inclusive city.
Accelerating Adoption of UD in our Built Environment
To advance the adoption of UD in our buildings, BCA has a suite of initiatives such as
guides, self-help tool,
courses and
funding support to assist architects, developers and building owners in making their buildings more user-friendly.
User-friendly Buildings
To encourage the industry to adopt UD in building design, we introduced the
UD index self-assessment framework (UDi) for building professionals to obtain an indicative user-friendly rating for their building projects. Projects which have achieved exemplary universal design implementation are awarded the
BCA UD Excellence Award.
