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A Way Forward
Published in Traci Rose Rider, Margaret van Bakergem, Building for Well-Being, 2021
Traci Rose Rider, Margaret van Bakergem
Universal design is a well-established pathway for creating both aesthetically pleasing and accessible environments for everyone. The seven Principles of Universal Design (Figure 12.1), developed in 1997 by an interdisciplinary working group of architects, product designers, engineers and environmental design researchers at North Carolina State University, outline strategies for creating equitable, usable products and spaces that ultimately amount to smartly designed environments for all building users.7 Examples of universal design strategies include ramps and lifts for people with mobility challenges, auditory wayfinding cues for those with low or no vision, and adjustable task lighting at workstations. Today, universal design remains a leader among a handful of approaches encouraging ongoing innovation for disability inclusion across products, spaces, and environments to successfully support any health equity initiative.
Age-Friendly and Inclusive Design
Published in Debra Flanders Cushing, Evonne Miller, Creating Great Places, 2019
Debra Flanders Cushing, Evonne Miller
The voices of people with disabilities continually remind us that the power to create a built environment that enables, rather than disables, lies in the hands of policymakers and designers. Read, for example, the submissions to a recent Australian Government review on disability. Almost a third of submissions to this adeptly titled ‘SHUT OUT’ review emphasized how poor design excluded people with disabilities from experiences many take for granted –not being able to attend their child’s end-of-year ballet concert or meet friends for dinner because the venue is not accessible. The lack of accessible bathrooms, lifts without Braille signage, narrow doorways, uneven surfaces, and unclear signage all combine to make the day-to-day experience of life exhausting, frustrating and isolating. One submission noted, ‘I do not expect to get access to the pyramids or Uluru but I do want to get into all of the library and all of the community centre.’
VLC Applications for Visually Impaired People
Published in Zabih Ghassemlooy, Luis Nero Alves, Stanislav Zvánovec, Mohammad-Ali Khalighi, Visible Light Communications, 2017
Rafael Pérez Jiménez, Jose A. Rabadan-Borges, Julio F. Rufo Torres, Jose M. Luna-Rivera
Universal design (often inclusive design) refers to broad-spectrum ideas meant to produce buildings, products, and environments that are inherently accessible to older people or people with disabilities. This concept emerged from slightly earlier barrier-free concepts, the broader accessibility movement, adaptive and assistive technology, and also seeks to blend aesthetics into these core considerations. As life expectancy rises and modern medicine increases the survival rate of those with significant injuries, illnesses, and birth defects, there is a growing interest in universal design. There are many industries in which universal design is having strong market penetration but there are many others in which it has not yet been adopted to any great extent. Universal design is also being applied to the design of technology, instruction, services, and other products and environments.
Access and Experiences of Arabic Native Speakers With Disabilities on Social Media During and After the World Pandemic
Published in International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 2023
Zainab AlMeraj, Iyad Abu Doush, Dari Alhuwail, Shok Shama, Ahmed AlBahar, Mohammad Al-Ramahi
Blind or visually impaired people face significant challenges when using technologies, especially smartphones (Lazar et al., 2007; Rodrigues et al., 2020). To address this and other limitations, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) first issued the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 1.0 in 1999 (Ballantyne et al., 2018). These guidelines, which are routinely updated, serve as a guide for digital content developers and programmers to build more inclusive technologies. The most recent official version is WCAG 2.1, which has a total of 13 guidelines and 78 Success Criteria (SC). The WCAG guidelines fall under four general principles for accessibility—Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust—and three priority levels of compliance “A,” “AA,” and “AAA,” with “A” being the minimal criteria to consider a website accessible (World Wide Web Consortium, 2018). To evaluate digital accessibility, four different techniques can be used: reviewing the conformance to the WCAG standards, user testing, subjective assessment, and screening methods (Hammad et al., 2020; Yesilada et al., 2015).
EASIER System. Evaluating a Spanish Lexical Simplification Proposal with People with Cognitive Impairments
Published in International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 2022
Rodrigo Alarcon, Lourdes Moreno, Paloma Martínez, José A. Macías
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) (W3C, 2022b), which are part of the W3C WAI include specific guidelines that, if followed, help make web content accessible to people with cognitive and learning disabilities. However, Small et al. (2005) conducted research on people with cognitive disabilities browsing websites that met WCAG guidelines. A usability study found that most users were able to access the Internet, but were unable to successfully use the websites. Several web navigation problems were detected, in addition to user satisfaction and perceived usability issues. This study clearly demonstrates that the WCAG guidelines do not sufficiently take into account the needs of people with cognitive disabilities. Further research is needed to better understand how these cognitive disabilities affect the use of web-based media and resources. Another important initiative to consider is the” Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Working Task Force (W3C-COGA)” (W3C, 2022a). One of the goals of this working group is to provide guidance on how to make websites and applications for users with cognitive disabilities, guiding both the designs themselves and the design process.
Designing mobile spatial navigation systems from the user’s perspective: an interdisciplinary review
Published in Spatial Cognition & Computation, 2022
Ian Ruginski, Nicholas Giudice, Sarah Creem-Regehr, Toru Ishikawa
Navigation systems have been shown to affect the user’s spatial learning (e.g., landmark location and configural knowledge) and navigational efficiency (e.g., travel time and navigation accuracy). Often, while the user may reach their goal successfully, their spatial learning is negatively affected (Dahmani & Bohbot, 2020; Gardony, Brunyé, Mahoney & Taylor, 2013; Hejtmánek et al., 2018; Ishikawa, 2019; Ishikawa & Takahashi, 2014; Ruginski et al., 2019). Although some navigation systems can have short-term negative effects on wayfinding and spatial learning (e.g., poor immediate recall of the traversed environment; Gardony et al., 2013; Hejtmánek et al., 2018; Ishikawa et al., 2008) and others lead to long-term deficits (e.g., degradation of spatial cognitive skills and awareness; Dahmani & Bohbot, 2020; Ishikawa, 2019; Ruginski et al., 2019), the problem of when and how to best use these systems remains multi-faceted. We do not argue that we should dispense with navigation systems; they are definitely convenient and support self-navigation, for example, for people with various disabilities, and the fact that the tools are popular and help simplify navigation tasks suggests that people will continue using them. What, then, do we still need to do, and how can we specifically improve these systems? What aspects of device design elements are associated with degraded spatial learning and navigational efficiency, in terms of cartographic visualizations or the method of providing directions? We posit that, to be truly effective, design elements should match how individuals categorize and process spatial information, especially in reference to the difficulty that they have with accurate spatial orientation and the existence of large individual differences in this ability. This line of reasoning – that design should be based on cognitive abilities and constraints – reflects a philosophy that has been referred to as “cognitive engineering” (Montello, 2002; Montello, Fabrikant & Davies, 2018; Raubal, 2009; Richter, Tomko & Coltekin, 2015) and can be discussed in relation to the idea of universal design (often also called inclusive design). Universal design is the idea that making systems accessible to specific users, such as people with disabilities, makes the systems more accessible and inclusive for all users and more usable in a wider range of use cases (Iwarsson & Ståhl, 2003; Story, 1998). Throughout this paper, we leverage empirical research and cognitive theories to argue for design principles that support universal design of mobile navigation systems.