Decolonizing Disability: access without erasure

Abstract

This thesis rethinks disability in the Global South by turning to Nigerian open-air markets, rather than institutional settings as primary sites of inquiry. More than points of exchange, these markets are cultural and civic arenas where economic activity intersects with social connection, mutual care, and collective identity. Marketplaces often function as “third places,” sustaining relationships, preserving communal memory, and hosting the negotiation of public life alongside commerce. Within this context, disability is framed not as a fixed biological deficit but as a condition shaped by environments, social structures, and cultural narratives. Drawing on critical disability studies, African epistemologies, and the concept of relational access, the project positions design as a continual negotiation between bodies, space, and practices of care, challenging functionalist approaches that reduce access to technical compliance.

A central critique advanced in this research is the co-option of accessibility language to legitimize exclusionary development. In postcolonial African cities, modernization projects often promise accessible infrastructure while simultaneously displacing those most reliant on markets for survival. Under the banner of “ultra-modern” shopping complexes, elderly traders, people with impairments, and low-income groups are frequently priced out, excluded from decision-making, and stripped of long-standing spatial and economic networks. In such cases, access becomes a rhetorical tool for privatization and displacement rather than a pathway to justice. This thesis argues that genuine access must go beyond token infrastructural features to address the deeper social, economic, and political systems that sustain participation.

Methodologically, the study combines critical literature with graphical anthropology, using mapping and diagramming to interpret the spatial conditions of Nigerian markets. This approach, informed by Jos Boys’s “Having a Body” framework, highlights how non-normative bodies engage space, revealing barriers such as uneven ground, sensory overload, or disorientation, alongside supports like shared seating, mutual caregiving, and assistance from load carriers. Through this iterative method, the research develops strategies grounded in lived realities rather than abstract standards, emphasizing collective arrangements that sustain participation. The design proposal focuses on Jos Main Market, a once-celebrated hub now in disrepair after arson and neglect. The intervention introduces a spine that organizes utilities and circulation while embedding care nodes for prayer, rest, sanitation, and basic medical support. A market workshop provides space for repair, fabrication, and low-cost assistive devices, affirming resourcefulness and local skill as vital forms of access. At its center, a market plaza serves as a commons, enhancing visibility and offering social services such as collective childcare, community kitchens, thrift collectives, and meeting areas. Together, these spaces strengthen support networks and ensure vulnerable groups remain active within the civic life of the market.

Ultimately, the thesis positions open-air markets as sites that resist the misuse of accessibility rhetoric by grounding access in reciprocity and collective care. Rather than treating informality as disorder to be erased, it demonstrates how markets themselves model alternative approaches to spatial justice. By centering lived experience, this project advances a decolonial vision of disability design, one where access is relational, negotiated, and inseparable from economic survival and community life.