Asian Social Science; Vol. 13, No. 12; 2017 ISSN 1911-2017 E-ISSN 1911-2025 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 112 Development of Housing Standards and Spatial Design Guidelines for Mobility Handicaps in Thailand Sasicha Sukkay 1 & Prapatpong Upala 1 1 Faculty of Architecture, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL), Bangkok, Thailand Correspondence: Sasicha Sukkay, Multidisciplinary Design Research, Faculty of Architecture, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand. Tel: 66-866-542518. E-mail: jimmysasicha@gmail.com Received: September 27, 2017 Accepted: October 29, 2017 Online Published: November 28, 2017 doi:10.5539/ass.v13n12p112 URL: https://doi.org/10.5539/ass.v13n12p112 Abstract The objectives of this research are 1) to compare the standards of housing design for mobility disabled at the domestic and universal levels, 2) to standardize the developing process of housing design guideline for mobility handicapped properly with the context of Thailand, and 3) to evaluate the proficiency of the guideline by employing both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Regarding the guidelines comparison, the results indicated that the available housing design guidelines in Thailand had excluded the spatial allocation standard for supporting the mobility dependency as well as some particular dwelling functions had been abandoned from these guidelines. Furthermore, it appeared that these design guidelines were not constituted based on the participatory of multidisciplinary experts, for instance, medical and architectural professionals. This research had initiated an evaluating process for the guideline’s competence by using four indicators,namely, 1) comprehension, 2) completeness, 3) convenience, and 4) composition of design. The rating scale questionnaires were distributed to the two sampling groups comprising the group of 30 experienced Government agencies and the group of 30 mobility handicapped. The data collection consisted of two main steps: 1) the assessment of the comparative study-based guideline and 2) the assessment of the participatory-based guideline. The data retrieved from these two phases were analyzed by the inferential statistics, Paired Sample t-test. The results revealed the differences between these two sampling groups in every design category at the significance level of 0.05. It was clear that the participatory-based guideline was more efficient than the comparative study-based guideline (p  0.005). Besides, the evaluating scores addressed by the group of experienced Government agencies and the group of mobility disabled representative were discovered significantly contrary. Keywords: people with disabilities ( PWD) , accessibility, guideline, multidisciplinary group 1. Introduction 1.1 People with Mobility Disabilities Nowadays, the population structure in Thailand has changed and has been dramatically increased from the past concerning numbers and the elderly proportion. In 2558 B. E, there was the total number of the elderly were 10.7 million (Knodel et al., 2015). Thus, it would be led to the elderly society. Their traditional life styles had a great effect on their health with chronic ailments such as diabetes, heart attack, cancer, etc. If they are not properly treated, they will have their health problems, even if physical disabilities in the future. This means that these handicaps will have difficulties in leading their lives both physical and mental conditions. From the handicap data in Thailand, the rate of the disabled people of Thailand in 2559 B.E. was highly gone to 10 percent of the total number of the elderly which was around 1,597,775 (Sukkay, 2016), the highest number of the physical handicaps, for about 765,561 people, resulting in providing them the social welfare and facilities for their better life quality by Thailand government. Hamid et al. (2011) thought that the housing adjustment for mobility handicaps will enhance them to have a better living incongruent with Fang & Iwarsson (2007) which claimed that “housing design was needed for mobility disabilities to use the residential areas easily with convenience led to their better lives”. Thus, the housing adjustment was the main issue affecting the life quality of the mobility handicaps to reach and do their daily routine due to having a great number of them as claimed by Saito (2006) that “Designing the environment without considering the physical potential of mobility handicaps would cause some hindrances in doing their daily routine. The cause of this problem resulted from the lack of readiness in housing adjustment as well as no information or guidelines for housing adjustment. There were two forms of housing adjustment; (1) housing adjustment after having one member of the family becoming a mobility handicap from the accident or having a chronic ailment (2) the new residence was built for people with mobility disabilities by birth so the housing design for them should have a manual in adjusting the proper residence and enabled them to do their daily activities conveniently without any obstacles in access to the residential areas conforming to Hogan’s concept (1992) that “the housing design for the mobility handicaps should meet their needs of the dwellers in considering the design for doing their daily routine in line with Fange & Iwarsson (2005) about the relationship of housing accessibility by claiming that the physical feature affecting individual factor and body function