Arkhart worked in partnership with the VHBA and Bickerton Masters to develop inclusive design guidelines for Victorian Emergency Departments for autistic people. Healthcare settings create significant stress and anxiety for all people, but this can be especially true for neurodiverse users or users with sensory sensitivities.
The guidelines, founded on the universal design principles, gave the department a practical guide to how the built environment should be designed to enable autistic people to have safe and comfortable experiences in health care settings. The guidelines also addressed complexities of wayfinding, signage, and staff training.
Working with peak bodies such as AMAZE, specialist researchers, and users with lived experience, we mapped stress and anxiety levels of patients, from arrival at a hospital to departure, to understand where the ‘hotspots’ of stress generally occur.
Arkhart then created a survey tool for the VHBA to audit existing building assets. The VHBA could then objectively determine which facilities required upgrades or adjustment to be more inclusive of all staff, patients and visitors.