@Differentforgirls it sounds like you don’t know much about UK design. American toilet design is different but it has influenced UK toilet design recently.
Over the years there’s been a couple of people who suggest the solution of having attendants at every public and venue (and school?) toilet. One was a high up person working involved in government. I asked how this would work practically and she got cross very quickly and admitted it wouldn’t work.
Another variation on the theme was an American man who designed ‘inclusive’ toilets, heralding it as a continuation of a civil rights movement. He makes money internationally discussing inclusivity and toilets. He admitted he hadn’t done risk assessments and post analysis at the lecture I saw, despite some very extensive installations in public buildings and education establishments. He reckoned his private designs were safe as there’s ‘safety in numbers’ which ‘reduces risks of predation
associated with being alone and out of sight’. This relies on enough good people watching the toilets for longer than the period of time they need to use it, presumably the good people doing their own mini risk assessments of who is going into which private toilet with whom, guessing the probabilities of them misusing the toilet and for how long they are in there in case they are trapped or are ill and need assistance. Then knocking on the door or finding someone to knock on the door to find out what’s happening. Back in the real world, that doesn’t work either. Good people aren’t hanging around the toilets watching everyone and taking note. That’s why people can be left in public toilets for hours or days. Contrast that to a single sex design with a floor-door gap where you can see someone is in trouble immediately. In the U.K. that’s the only design that is allowed to have toilet door gaps when it’s in a single sex environment.
The reason I have been very interested in the American’s designs is that there was a UK government commissioned report on design for toilets for people with long term health conditions. You would have thought this report would look at the needs of millions with conditions such as heart disease (11% of cardiac arrests happen in the toilet), stroke collapse, epilepsy, diabetes, endometriosis. It did not. It recommended an enclosed design for people with long term health conditions with literature evidence based on an opinion article co-authored by the American designer. To be fair, his article was not looking at people with long term health conditions. It was recommending a design based on transactivists preferences for enclosed toilets in trendy American nightclubs. Here is the direct quote: ‘A better solution, supported by many transactivists, and increasingly found in trendy nightclubs and restaurants, is to eliminate gender-segregated facilities entirely and treat the public restroom as one single
open space with fully enclosed stalls’.
It is not transphobic to point out that these enclosed designs are not good for people at their most vulnerable. A trans person overdosing or having a seizure or a mental health crisis will be at risk too. The design elements are in conflict. If you are advising the government on toilet designs for people with long term health conditions, you should be basing your literature evidence on the needs of people with long term health conditions.
When you are designing a necessary facility, health and safety take priority. I want to keep toilets safe. Complete privacy removes the indirect supervision for medical emergencies or being trapped and creates an environment for misuse. You may not realise how many people do require urgent assistance in toilets but it is the place people go to when ill so as a location it’s a place people collapse. Ventilation and hygiene are compromised too in enclosed toilets.
I want safe toilets for everyone. ‘Inclusive’ design is a misnomer. It’s best for healthy men who are usually the ones designing, promoting, and arguing for them as they don’t recognise the risks.