Category: Learning about universal design

It’s assumed that by the time students leave school they can read and write. However, even with remedial work, some students will leave school without a working level of these skills. More than 40% of Australians do not have the literacy skills for everyday living. Included in this group are people with English as a second language. This is why plain language communication is important – and good for everyone. It is a universal design approach to communication.

Governments now are producing Easy Read documents as adjuncts to their main documents. But other fields of endeavour are not catching up. In particular, academic writing has always been exclusive to those who can read at this level. The bottom line is, if you want your document and information read by as many people as possible, write in plain language. Alternatively, provide a plain language summary. But this is another skillset.

A short study on teaching plain language gives an example of how to go about the task. It is based on health and exercise information. Presented in a poster format, the paper explains how the study was done. The example of writing a participant consent form illustrates the task. After several iterations they reached 8th grade (US grading) reading level. The example is shown in the poster presentation. There is also a link to an explanatory video.

The title of the poster is, “Are Kinesiologists Ready to Communicate? Merits of a Practicum Course on Plain Language Communication”. There are links to the authors other work on the topic.  

We are seeing more accessible formats for people who are blind/low vision and Deaf/hard of hearing. So, we need plain language and Easy Read too. 

Cathy Basterfield presented a paper on this topic at UD2021, and also see a previous post on plain language. 

How do you universally design a universal design guide or toolkit? Living the message is a key factor – if designing something to be inclusive, the process and outputs must be inclusive too. If not, key sections of your intended audience could be missing out on your information. After all, learners come in all shapes and sizes and different frames of reference. 

When devising a customer engagement toolkit, the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design in Ireland also documented their process and lessons learned. The document is focused on tourism, but the method and principles are relevant to any field of practice.

The title of the report is Lessons from Good Practices to Guide Universal Design Toolkits. However, with the update of the website this document is not readily found. Nevertheless, some of the content is mentioned below. 

At 100 pages this is a lengthy document. You might want to skip the first part and go directly to the section on Guidelines to Toolkit Authors, which is at the end. Each of the headings and subheadings form a guide to developing and designing instructional toolkits and guidelines for practice.  

Key points

Here are some of the key points from this section about the structure of the toolkit:

Step 1: ‘Perception’, the ability to understand information regardless of the user’s ability to see, hear or touch
Step 2: ‘Discoverability’, providing flexibility in use so that the user can find the information they want
Step 3: ‘Understanding’, how easy it is for the customer to interpret and understands how to use the content; regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level
Step 4: ‘Use’, the design prevents from accidental or inadvertent actions, forms, controls and navigation are usable and the customer decides on how to use and act on the content presented

Living the message is an important point in the universal design world. Anyone who writes, educates or speaks about universal design and inclusive practice should live the message. For example, a slideshow presentation about universal design with tiny font is contrary to the message. 

 

What are Plain Language Summaries? These are an invaluable adjunct to abstracts in academic papers. They help more readers understand the content of the article, especially if the topic is unfamiliar. Beth Myers and Teukie Martin provide a good example when explaining why they use these summaries:

What are Plain Language Summaries (PLS)?

• • • Plain language summaries are short summaries of research articles.
    • They communicate the main ideas of the article and are easy to understand.
    • PLS are also used by the government, doctors, and places like banks and utility companies. Some research journals use PLS, too.

Why are PLS important?

• • •  Research articles can be hard to read and understand.
    • PLS make research accessible to many kinds of people.
    • Everyone should have access to information that impacts their lives. PLS help make that possible.

Why are PLS important for the Journal of Inclusive Postsecondary Education?

• • • We want our work to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, including students with intellectual disability and all people who care about inclusive education.
    • We want to show other journals how to be more accessible.
    • We want to make the world a better and more accessible place.

Plain language writing is clear, succinct, and jargon-free, and is organized in a way that helps understanding. It is a reader-centered way of writing so that readers can access, comprehend, and utilise information. Plain language writing benefits all readers while ensuring crucial access for some. It’s universal design.

The title of the article is, Why Plain Language? Linguistic Accessibility in Inclusive Higher Education. The journal is clearly living the message of inclusion in writing up research. As such, this is a short document with all the key information without jargon. 

Example of a plain language summary

Plain Language Summaries are not quite the same as Easy Read or Easy English documents which use simplified language. The wording and pictures in these documents are carefully placed on the page as well. 

What’s the point of academic research if only other academics can understand it? Governments often fund research, so we should all have access to this new knowledge. But if you want to rise in the ranks of academia you need to follow the “rules” for publishing. You also need to show that you know the language and jargon. There is no need to change this. What we need are additional plain language summaries. The picture below shows an example. 

Academic papers begin with an abstract – an outline of what the paper or article is about. It usually says what the problem is, what they researched and what they found. A plain language summary of the abstract gives the same information but in less words. So what does a plain language summary look like? 

A good example is the article, Co-designing the Cabriotraining: A training for transdisciplinary teams. It begins with an “Accessible Summary” followed by the regular abstract.  This is how it reads:

Accessible summary

• • The research was conducted by a team of researchers. Some of the researchers have experience of living with a disability.
  • The researchers created training for other research teams that include experts by experience.
  • The training has six parts. To decide what happened in the training, the researchers read articles and asked the research teams they trained about what problems they had and what they wanted to know about.
  • The article tells why and how the training was made. It also says what training is needed for researchers with and without disabilities to learn and work together in a way that feels safe and useful.
  • In developing and providing the training, it was very crucial to search for a safe and welcome space for all people involved (Figure 8). As we don’t know what is “safe” for the other, this means we have to search together, in respect and with enough time to get to know each other.

Editor’s note: Great to see an academic paper translated into key points that many more people can understand. From my experience, writing succinctly and plainly is a rare skill in academia. I was delighted to see this example. It’s universal design!

 

Virginia Richardson has set up a new universal design interest group for local government staff. This new Local Government Universal Design Network enables like-minded people to share experiences and skills in universal design and inclusive practice.

Local government staff and others with an interest in local government are invited to join this new network. If you are interested in joining, Virginia asks that you complete the online form. 

The objectives of the Network are:

• • • Greater understanding of how UD is being applied in a Local Government setting
    • Support for UD policies to be adopted by more Councils
    • Opportunities for shared professional development and capacity building
    • Potential for joint advocacy to improve State and Federal legislation

This is a great initiative by Virginia Richardson who works for the Mornington Peninsular Shire Council in Victoria. The acronym works too – LGUDN (elgood’n).

 

How can we get design educators and students to think beyond themselves? Considering other body shapes, sizes, ages and interests is essential for inclusive designs. But designing with users, or co-design, is another skill set. Fake personas, building codes and anthropometric data are a good start, but they lack the evidence of lived experience. Without inclusive designs, we cannot meet our commitment for the Sustainable Development Goals. 

The issue of teaching educators to look beyond the tried and true design methods is being tackled by a team from Queensland University of Technology. In their article, they take a critical look at current approaches to design education in architecture and interior design studios. They propose an “authentic learning approach” which includes engagement with real users. 

The title of the article is, Breaking Barriers: Educating Design Students about Inclusive Design through an Authentic Learning Framework.  You will need institutional access for a free read. Or you can contact Janice Rieger and ask for a copy.

Abstract

Current studies in design education suggest that students and educators base their designs on what they already know about themselves and their peers, or on stereotypical notions of others. This article presents a critical examination of a pedagogical approach employed in several architecture and interior design studios to determine how best to develop student understanding of how to design for real users and users with abilities different from themselves. This authentic learning approach with spatial design students and teachers from the School of Design, Queensland University of Technology, Australia and with people with differing abilities, used qualitative and quantitative questionnaires, student journals and design studio projects to create a multimodal data set. While there are no simple conclusions, or easy answers to unravel the complexity in creating inclusive designs, our findings point towards enabling new engagements and knowledge processes and scaffolding these activities around authentic learning, so that design students and educators can begin to understand the differing ways of designing for/with people with disabilities. The significance of this research is that it opens up new approaches for teaching design students about inclusive design beyond fake personas, building codes and anthropometric data, and provides evidence of the need for a more holistic, authentic and scaffolded approach.