The new card design by Mastercard has taken account of people who are blind. It is a classic example of a small design change making a huge difference. And it’s all achieved by cutting a shape on the edge of the card. There are three types of card: credit, debit and prepaid. So there are three different notches. The inclusive credit card design is called the Touch Card.
Visits to heritage sites are more than history and the site itself. It’s also about the interactions you have with others. Most inclusive tourism research has focused on the relationship between the operator and customer. But what about the relationship between visitors with and without disability? Shared settings for visitors create value for all customers and therefore the business. So how can operators facilitate inclusive customer to customer experiences?
Chiscano and Darcy used a heritage site for a qualitative study on customer to customer interactions. The aim of the research was to find out how people with and without disability share an experience. They also wanted to know how the interactions created value for the customers. Their paper is very academic with lots of theory and methods. It uses the language of “value outcome” and “social practices”.
Interactions were observed and participants reported on their interactions throughout the experience. The article reports in detail their findings of interactions that include and exclude. The concluding section has a table of quotes by participants which includes participant feedback on how they felt.
The article concludes with advice for heritage and cultural site managers. Operators can facilitate positive outcomes for visitors with and without disability by changing some of their processes. Providing support tools for people with different disability types before the activity is very helpful. People with disability enjoy their experience more if they can share it with other visitors with or without disability.
Sensory gardens are usually associated with people who are blind or partially sighted. But this strategy is not inclusive – everyone should be able to enjoy the experience. Gardens that are fragrant, colourful, create sounds, are nice to touch, and good to taste are for everyone. Together with accessible amenities, sensory gardens can be inclusive rather than segregated.
COVID has raised the importance of trees and gardens for the health and wellbeing of city-dwellers. A study in Poland assessed sensory gardens in the context of urban forests. Trees in urban settings: street trees home garden trees, and trees in parks make an urban forest. The aim of the study was to show that sensory gardens are just one element of urban forests that everyone can enjoy.
The study assessed fifteen gardens and one sensory path. The sense of smell was given priority, but other amenities were lacking in these gardens. The authors concluded that a universal design approach would make these gardens more inclusive.
The title of the article is, Recreation and Therapy in Urban Forests—The Potential Use of Sensory Garden Solutions.
Find out the basics of a sensory garden from Houz website – Please Touch and More: 5 Elements of a Sensory Garden.
Should we call it ‘inclusive tourism’ or ‘accessible tourism?’ Well that depends. If it is a destination or activity specifically designed for people with disability then it’s accessible. If it is a mainstream service AND it is fully accessible for everyone then it’s inclusive. There is a place for both. However, inclusive in this context is not to be confused with “all inclusive” products and services where the price includes everything.
Here is a list of some accessible tourism organisations that are specifically for people with disability.
Accessible Accommodation is a find and book website with good visual and video information about the properties. You can subscribe to their newsletter.
Getaboutable is a social enterprise and consultancy focused on access and inclusion in the tourism industry. The website has a section on planning your next accessible and inclusive trip as well as other useful information.
Have Wheelchair Will Travel is a website where a family shares their travel experiences to help others. They also share day-to-day tips and other activities in between. They produce a magazine titled, Travel Without Limits.
Distinctive Options Travel (DO Travel) has a focus on disability specific holidays, stays and tours. This is an extension of their NDIS services. They have group tours.
Travability provides accessible travel information.The Destinations section of the website has plenty to offer travellers. There is also a news and resource section for the traveller and the tourism sector.
iSCREAM Travel provides tailored travel adventures from booking the holiday, hiring equipment, and connecting with care assistance. They say “you shouldn’t have to travel with the kitchen sink”.
Go Wheel the World is an international travel organisation that will find and book holiday experiences.
The Access Agency has a travel blog, Freewheel Weekends with stories and a directory of places and venues in Melbourne.
Grab Your Wheels Let’s Travel is a blog site for travellers. It has a list of activities and accommodation. The site has a good example of how to describe a wheelchair accessible hotel and room.
Making Trax is an adventure tourism site for travellers and operators.
Ability Adventures is a specialist travel company providing tailored itineraries.
There are many research papers and business guides on travel and tourism on this website. The emphasis of the research is on the missed business opportunities for operators. The guides are devised to help operators improve their accessibility.
The pictures on the Council website show the cabins. This is also a good example of how information should be presented for wheelchair users to know just what is, and what is not, included. Saying something is “fully accessible” is of little use – it might only have a ramp and nothing else.
It should be noted that these are bespoke designs specifically for wheelchair users. However, there is no reason why non-wheelchair users can’t use them.
Three papers from the International Journal of Architecture and Planning address universal design. Once you scroll through the usual context-setting paragraphs on the principles of universal design, the research itself has something to offer. The articles are on cinema experiences, user experience and public space
Disability and Otherization: Readings on Cinema in The Light of UD Principles. The study explains the relationship between architecture and disability in cinema, and how it is portrayed. Using 6 well-known films that include othering, the researchers apply the 7 principles of universal design to analyse how disability is portrayed. Interesting way of dissecting societal attitudes and how such films might impact on social attitudes perhaps reinforcing prejudices.
User-Involved Universal Design Experience in the Space, Product and Service Development Process, concludes that universal design is about multiple users regardless of the design discipline. The aim was to encourage students to design beyond specialised “disability products” and to integrate a wide spectrum of users.
Public Space and Accessibility examines pedestrian ways including ramps. Specific dimensions make this a guide largely for wheelchair access. Car parking and bus stops are also covered. The article reports on a workshop they ran on universal design. It ends with the note that other disabilities including cognitive diversity now need to be considered. Perhaps of most interest to access consultants to compare with Australian standards.
Infrastructure built before disability activists gained legal recognition of their human rights is often inaccessible. Newer buildings have basic access according to the standards imposed by governments. However, standards are no guarantee for full access for everyone. Consequently, urban researchers continue to write in the hope of effecting change for the accessibility of public space.
A chapter in the book, Future of the City, is yet another offering about universal design and how accessibility is for everyone. This one includes a chart with solutions for typical barriers. These solutions are prescriptive with dimensions and measurements. The chart covers paths of travel, vertical travel, spatial elements and fittings, and transportation infrastructure.
Photographs and good examples illustrate the points made. The information is useful for councils and capital works staff. It fits neatly with the Age Friendly Checklist for Councils.
The title of the open access chapter is Accessibility of pubic space. Although there are some language differences in disability terms, the article is easy to read and makes some clear points. For example,
“For many people leading an independent life may be fully conditional on the accessibility of public spaces. Through accessible places, such people have a chance to participate in the social and economic life of the country or local society.”
“It is estimated that up to 30% of society have permanent or temporary limitations in mobility or perception. Many of these people do not have the status of a disabled person. Therefore, it can be said that accessibility concerns all of us.”
The chapter concludes with a comment about the gradual change in the accessibility of public buildings. However, there is more work to do.
European Commission has published a built environment standard for accessibility. It describes basic, common minimum functional requirements using universal design principles. The accessibility and usability requirements relate to the design, construction, refurbishment and maintenance of indoor and outdoor environments.
The standard was based on consensus between relevant stakeholders. The CEN-CENELEC webpage has more detail about the standard and what it contains. The document is titled, EN 17210:2021 Accessibility and usability of the built environment – Functional requirements.
There is a related document about public procurement to support accessibility in the built environment. This is also part of their Active and Health Ageing strategy.
The “CEN-CENELEC Protocol on accessibility following a Design for All approach in standardization” outlines the procedure to help technical bodies decide whether accessibility, with a Design for All approach, should be addressed when developing or revising a standardization deliverable.
The European Committee for Standardization is one of three European Standardization Organizations (together with CENELEC and ETSI). They are officially recognized as being responsible for developing and defining voluntary standards at European level.
The websites are not the easiest to navigate but there is more information if you care to start searching their standards.
What if architecture, interior design, engineering and product design students spend a week together to investigate the design of the built environment by making it impossible to use? By deliberately creating designs that are impossible or difficult to use, students learned about universal design. This method is known as ‘critical design’.
A week of critical design workshops provoked reflection, awareness, empathy and action among the next generation of designers involved in the built environment. The paper provides details of the workshops and the processes, and the outcomes for the students and their designs. The picture above shows four of the designs discussed in the article.
The students felt the workshop was a great learning experience. Although the workshop method needs some perfecting, it shows that students approach universal design in a more thoughtful way.
The designs were exhibited for others to experience the difficulties people with different disabilities experience with a design. Critical design is a real challenge to design problem solving.
The title of the paper is, Empathy Enabled by Critical Design – A New Tool in the Universal Design Toolbox. The article is published in the proceedings of the UDHEIT 2018 conference held in Dublin, Ireland.
Editor’s note: I liked the narrow doorway with a sticky floor that made entry difficult.
The 5th International Universal Design Conference was held in Finland earlier this year. This is an academic conference with published papers. That’s great for other academics but not so good for practitioners who want the bottom line. So it’s good to see a more consumable version of 25 selected papers.
The original papers from the conference were published by IOS Press Ebooks, titled, Universal Design 2021: From Special to Mainstream Solutions. It runs to 400 pages and is open access. Each paper is downloadable separately. However, it is a lot of scrolling to find titles of interest.
The Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Universal Design, is in one document with shorter versions of the original papers. The content covers the breadth of physical and digital environments, health and education. It also shows how far universal design thinking has come in the last ten years or so.
The themes are:
When choosing a web developer to update your site, don’t assume they know all about accessibility. The guidelines for web accessibility are often treated like tacked on ramps to a building. That is, something you think of after you’ve done the design. To ensure accessibility of your site, it pays to know how web design decisions are made. And you don’t need to be a tech person.
A paper from the United States spells out the development process to show how accessibility gets missed. The authors report that one study found that more than 70% of websites contain multiple barriers to accessibility. Another study found that almost all homepages didn’t meet the basic web standards for accessibility.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a general guide for developers. But they are not the total answer because they are more about code compliance than accessibility. Hence, design briefs need to include usability testing early in the concept stage.
The process often begins with brand, customers, and the message to be communicated. This stage rarely involves accessibility concerns. Designers make assumptions about users – usually people like themselves – for the next steps. Designs are reviewed by art directors and brand creators. Colours and font choices are considered at this stage but without reference to accessibility.
If the design team lacks diversity this is where design justice becomes design privilege. Before any coding takes place, images, animations and graphics are created to show what the site will look like. Users are not involved in the testing at this stage. The key issue with web accessibility tools is that they look at code, not these mock-ups.
The prototype stage would be a good point in the design process to begin user testing. It is as this stage colour, font, layout and other critical access features can be addressed. However, communicating brand message takes priority. Responding to the needs of less privileged and less able users is left for coding checks rather than usability checks.
The authors conclude that considering accessibility early in the process can bring greater usability for all. However, industry development processes often result in accessibility being an afterthought. Standards are not enough to meet the needs of all users. Consequently, industry’s internal processes need to change.
The title of the paper is, Addressing Accessibilty as Advocacy. The authors use the term “special needs”. The article is easy to read and not tech-based. It is more about advocating for social justice in the digital world.
The Centre for Excellence in Universal Design in Ireland has a comprehensive IT Procurement Toolkit. It takes potential purchasers of IT systems through the process of procurement, including assessing potential suppliers, and overseeing the successful implementation of accessibility features. It also shows how to manage the accessibility of the system once the set-up phase is complete. This means ensuring that documents staff produce for the website also meet the accessibility criteria. Each section of the Toolkit is provided separately. It includes:
Universal design for learning (UDL) has three pillars: multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement. Previous posts have explained these in more detail. But how does that work out in practice? It’s one thing to talk and read about it. It’s another to actually incorporate UDL into the curriculum. An article in the Learning Innovation Exchange spells it out.
Christina Galliou has devised a checklist based on the three pillars. She links usual practice to alternatives with particular relevance to online learning. Many of the alternatives are easy to achieve such as providing documents in Word format as well as PDF.
Multiple means of representation:
| Usual practice | Alternatives |
| audios | transcripts and visuals |
| file types for editing | provide Word versions |
| information in one language | tools for vocabulary, dictionaries |
| limited supply of background knowledge | concept maps to make connections, bridge concepts |
Multiple means of action and expression:
| Usual practice
use assistive technologies |
Alternatives
alternative keyboards, voice control, text to speech (vice versa) |
| use multiple media | text, audio, graphics, videos, interactive web tools |
| provide support in learning strategy development | prompts, guides, checklists, planning templates |
| customised feedback | progress charts, hints and cues |
| flexible assessment, self assessment strategies | review, peer feedback, role playing, checklists, rubrics |
Multiple means of engagement:
| Usual practice | Alternatives |
| purpose of lesson is clear to learner | provide learning objectives |
| capture learner interest | relevant material, real world examples |
| foster self-regulation | rubrics, checklists, reflection |
| maintain effort and persistence | scaffolds, group work, differentiated degree of difficulty in activities. |
The title of the article is, Applying Universal Design for Learning. The focus is on creating an inclusive online educational environment. However, the principles apply to all learning situations and all age groups. The website has more articles on learning including Designing the ‘experience’ not the lecture.
CAST UDL guidelines graphic is a quick reference guide to the three pillars. Click on the picture to download the chart. 
There is more on UDL in the Universal Design for Learning section of this website.
