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Methodological Reflection

In document Accessing Amsterdam (pagina 33-40)

This research took place in the city of Amsterdam from February 2022 to April 2022. During this time, I developed multiple strategies to assess the accessibility of cultural venues for people with disabilities. The methods and design used for this research during the fieldwork

period were purely qualitative. This included semi-structured participant interviews (9 total, 4 online and 5 in-person all recorded and transcribed), analysis of multiple documents from the Municipality of Amsterdam, and observations of cultural venues, alongside an accessibility assessment checklist. By doing this, my goal was to collect enough data from multiple sources to be able to triangulate all of my data.

The criteria set by Lincoln and Gumba (1985, 1994) was used to assess the quality of this research. This is based on two primary measures: trustworthiness, which includes credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability, and authenticity, which includes fairness, ontological, educative, catalytic, and tactical authenticity (Bryman 2012, pp. 390-393), (Lincoln and Gumba, 1985), (Gumba and Lincoln, 1994). Due to the limited resources and time allocated for this research, authenticity was difficult to fully achieve, but some aspects of it have been partially reached, which will be analysed later on. Due to the time and economical limitations of this research, these findings are preliminary, and its local impact might be limited.

Despite the fact that there is a variety of experiences a person might have in regard to disability, inclusion, and the ease or difficulty of mobility within cultural sites, the goal of this thesis is to display all the layers of these realities truthfully and accurately. With this in mind, to assess the credibility of this research, triangulation was used. As explained by Denzin (1970: 310), “triangulation” is often referred to as an “approach that uses multiple observers, theoretical perspectives, sources of data, and methodologies.” As mentioned above, this research aimed to collect as much data as possible to be able to triangulate it by cross-checking and cross-referencing the data collected from participant interviews,

observations of public cultural spaces alongside an accessibility checklist for museums from

Interreg Europe, and public relevant documents on initiatives, projects, and rules, regarding accessibility, culture, and inclusion from the Municipality of Amsterdam.

To assess the transferability of this research, the Background chapter of this thesis will be used to display the “thick description” of the research context and participant experiences, as explained by Geertz (1973). This was done by providing a historic and contemporary

contextual review, alongside the descriptions given by the participants interviewed during the research. With this, it was possible to contextualise, understand, and rely on the description of the interviewees and their relation to what is currently happening within this context, as seen in the Context chapter.

Throughout the fieldwork, record-keeping was done digitally. Every edit made on research documents, markings on the checklist, and recordings were all time-stamped and saved on a digital history log. Alongside this, a notebook was also used as well on interview days to annotate any relevant information aside from the interview questions, which were also dated.

This helps with the transparency of this research and its dependability. Throughout the thesis-writing process, the data will be analysed by other peers and professors, which will then minimise any possible bias found, increasing the dependability as well.

While remaining completely unbiased and objective in interviews is simply impossible, as a researcher I acted as neutral and unbiased as I could. There were times during the interviews where remaining objective became more difficult, since they dealt with the mistreatment of the people being interviewed, and the injustices they faced at times. To combat any further biases during the interview, I tried my best to follow the interview questions I had priorly drafted for every interviewee, and I made sure to try and get as many viewpoints on the issues

as possible, to diminish any participant bias. I remained as objective as possible, to ensure confirmability. Positionality is further discussed in the Ethics section of the research.

In terms of authenticity, due to the limitations on time and resources, it was not fully achieved as trustworthiness was. However, fairness and a bit of educative and catalytic authenticity were somewhat met. As mentioned before, the participants came from diverse backgrounds, opinions, and knowledge, which gave them all different and unique voices, and I tried to find as many as possible that were associated with any aspect of my main research themes. During the interviews, educative and catalytic authenticity did partially occur, as many were not as aware of the issue of accessibility, and towards the end of the interviews, they felt compelled to act on the, often, lack of accessibility around them. Some had already acted on it, and some were just discovering these issues. All in all, most participants that weren’t quite aware of the issue seemed to become more mindful, and the others were already actively participating in tackling accessibility issues. With this, authenticity was somewhat achieved, despite the limitations.

4 Research Context

There are 873,338 inhabitants in the municipality of Amsterdam as of 2021, with the number of residents with physical disabilities unclear (“Residents per municipality,” 2021). In The Netherlands, “1 in 10 Dutch people have a moderate or severe disability,” with 12% of the entire population experiencing a moderate or severe “impairment” due to a physical disability (“Beperkingen in mobiliteit,” 2020), (“Meer vrouwen dan mannen beperkt in bewegen,”

2019). In Amsterdam, according to a recent survey by the municipality, 66% of residents cannot participate in everything they want to do, with access to leisure activities being one of the most common complaints (Gemeente Amsterdam, n.d.-a). Aside from leisure, public transport and space were the other main complaints by Amsterdammers, with “44% of the problems occurring daily and 44% regularly” (Gemeente Amsterdam, n.d.-a).

Amsterdam is quite an old city, being mentioned for the first time in history in the year 1275 (Gemeente Amsterdam, n.d.-c). So, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of buildings that are centuries old, but that have been seemingly built without the thought of being accessible. This can be seen in the structure of the buildings themselves, like the narrow entrances, steep stairs, and uneven surfaces. In contrast to this, the city of Amsterdam itself is easily walkable and bikeable, with world-renown bicycle infrastructure offering the quickest, and often safest, ways to move around (Rijkswaterstaat, 2020). In comparison with cities in North America, these places often experience the opposite: barely walkable or bikeable sites or infrastructure, but buildings are easily accessible, mostly due to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The ADA is a federal civil rights law introduced in 1990 which protects people with disabilities from discrimination, including in accessibility to “everyday activities,” making accessibility mandatory for every building and public space (“Introduction to the Americans

with Disabilities Act,” n.d). While in The Netherlands there is no overarching mandatory accessibility act, approaches to and guidelines about accessibility are left up to each individual municipality. An example of these guidelines can be seen in the accessibility handbook for Eindhoven, titled “Toegankelijkheid Richtlijnen voor een Toegankelijke Openbare Ruimte” (2009).

The municipality of Amsterdam is currently taking an initiative to be more inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities (PWD) with an Inclusion Initiative (2020-2023) in a range of ways, after receiving the feedback mentioned earlier from Amsterdammers and their complaints regarding accessibility issues (Gemeente Amsterdam, n.d.-a). More specifically, these complaints ranged from the inaccessibility of cafés, museums, and shops, to the lack of railings in stairs, crowded sidewalks, and “dangerous shared spaces,” like the areas around Amsterdam Centraal and the Rijksmuseum regularly (Gemeente Amsterdam, n.d.-a). The municipality of Amsterdam has an inclusion agenda with 10 points that align with the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and works with local neighbourhoods in the city to create an inclusion agenda specific to each area in the city (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2021). Some of these goals aim to create more social awareness and inclusivity, others aim to make mobility easier throughout the city, and others aim to enforce earlier policies and regulations within the city. (Gementee Amsterdam, 2021).

This is interesting; while the city aims to be more accessible and inclusive, the UNESCO Heritage designation of the center poses some challenges for making accessibility-related changes. This is important since the center of the city and its adjacent neighbourhoods are all protected by this designation, yet these locations are filled with popular leisure activities and abundant public spaces. These locations were the same areas that received multiple

accessibility complaints by Amsterdammers (Gementee Amsterdam, n.d.-a). Although the historic preservation of the World Heritage Site is important, it seems like this is challenging the municipality’s goals of an inclusive and accessible Amsterdam. Even though people with physical disabilities (PWPD) can already enjoy significantly more freedom and independence in the city because of the implementation of the municipality’s inclusive initiatives, inclusive biking infrastructure, and disability action groups' involvement, they are still facing

difficulties while entering and navigating most shops, restaurants, museums, and other buildings in the city (Gementee Amsterdam, 2021d). One of the ways that the Gemeente Amsterdam is furthering its inclusivity is with government subsidies for special bikes,

allowing for higher mobility for people with physical disabilities. (Douma, 2020), (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2021). While inclusive infrastructure and government subsidies have managed to increase the mobility of 16% of people with physical disabilities in The Netherlands, this furthers the case on as to why Amsterdam is a unique case study: Although the Municipality of Amsterdam and the government of The Netherlands are able to further outdoor

accessibility and mobility with its bike infrastructure, the indoor accessibility of cultural venues within and around the UNESCO World Heritage area and its buffer zone, and World Heritage Sites in the municipality are still not up to par (Douma, 2020) (Zijlstra, Durand &

Bakker, 2019). Amsterdam’s World Heritage designations and cultural venues highlight the city’s rich history, and while municipal policies are tackling accessibility issues, they still remain an issue for some of the city’s residents and visitors.

5 Findings

This chapter presents the main findings of the fieldwork, based on all the themes found during the interviews with each participant. With these findings, I aim to find the relationship between them and my research question: how are municipal inclusion policies affecting the accessibility of cultural venues for people with disabilities? All interviewees had different backgrounds, and not all of them had a direct experience with disability, to my knowledge.

Out of those who did have direct experience with disability, all of them spoke about inclusion, independence, and respect multiple times. Those who did not, as far as I was concerned, have any direct experience with disability, did not discuss disability or

accessibility at as much length as those who did. This was all mostly within the context of their jobs and volunteering activities, but also personal lives and experiences. Each theme that arose in our conversations was categorised under the following: accessibility of cultural sites, active action towards more inclusivity, the inclusion of disabled people, and UNESCO-related preservation of the sites. In the following paragraphs, a more detailed breakdown of these themes is explored, as well as a look at the results of the accessibility checklist.

In document Accessing Amsterdam (pagina 33-40)