Abstract
Background
Sensory peculiarities of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) significantly affect their lives, making the relationship with the environment difficult to face. Many authors, referring to the urban environment, report that rather more stimuli required to be processed and orientation and navigation are challenging skills at different scales. The growing incidence and prevalence of the disorder and the need to guarantee during adulthood the actual opportunity to exercise the level of autonomy achieved during youth, emphasize the necessity to 'broaden' the research perspective by investigating also how the shape and the organization of the urban environment affect the quality of life of this group of inhabitants. GAP REDUCE is a R&D project aiming at developing a tool to provide support to adult and high-functioning people with ASD to plan, easily and in advance, an urban itinerary towards daily destinations. After the development of a cognitive framework on the relationship between built environment and autism, a survey involving different experts has been conducted to identify the relevant urban spatial features to calculate the most suitable path (in terms of sensory stimuli, accessibility and orientation). A neighbourhood in Sassari (Italy) was selected as pilot study area to test the tool.
Results
The identified urban features were classified into positive and negative points of interest, acting as spatial facilitators or obstacles respectively, and evaluated on the basis on a set of indicators according to their impact on the possibility for the user to reach the selected destination.
Conclusions
GAP REDUCE is an innovative tool that leverages on spatial facilitator to make the urban environment more accessible, inclusive and healthy to people with ASD. Indeed, this principle and tool can be also applied to other groups of inhabitants (elderly, people with dementia, people with other sensory disabilities).
Commentary on Walsgrove H and Fulbrook P (2005) Advancing the clinical perspective: a practice development project to develop the nurse practitioner role in an acute hospital trust.Journal of Clinical Nursing14, 444-455
