Category: Learning about universal design

The myth of the accessible bathroom

A bathroom with red tiled wall has a white wc pan and two drop down grab bars. It's indicative of an accessible bathroom.Videos explaining universal design, almost universally start by showing a person in a wheelchair. This is one reason why people think universal design is disability design. It’s also why they think they don’t need it – it’s for the “others”. 

When the classic 7 Principles of Universal Design were devised in 1997, the concept was envisioned as mainstream. Hence the use of the term “universal”. However, universal design does benefit people with disability most. And it’s difficult to explain universal design without including people with disability

A video from the United States, titled Laying the Foundation for Universal Design, also starts with wheelchair users. In the second half it moves onto the 7 Principles as originally intended. It emphasises that universal deign goes beyond compliance. In this case, the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

One speaker captures the concept well, “I laughingly talk about the myth of the accessible bathroom, because there are so many ways you can meet the intent of the law, and still it doesn’t meet everyone’s needs”. Looking for flexibility in the solutions available is the key. It’s critical to think about how different people respond, perceive or interact with a design.

This video is one in a series and good for introducing people to the concept of universal design. It has some good take home messages. However, the focus is on people with disability. There is little mention of children, older people, people who are neurodiverse, and those using wheeled devices other than wheelchairs.

Similarly to Australia, the US legislation, ADA, does not require universal design. Compliance usually results in accessibility as an afterthought. Universal design is a set of performance guidelines that explain why it should be done.

Thanks to LifeMark in New Zealand for this find. The video was created by Tools for Life Georgia AT in the US. It is one of a series.

 

Design details and everyday experiences

Title of the article in white text over an image of the top of an escalatorWhat is it about designs that either include or exclude users? Many designs are everyday – the things we hardly notice. That is, until we have difficulty using them. Design students need to see how exclusion happens.

Deborah Beardslee takes the perspective of physical ability to analyse how inclusion and exclusion happen in the design process. She notes that most designs work reasonably well for most people even if they aren’t designed that well. But we are all familiar with some degree of compromised experience. For example, hard to read instructions, doors that are difficult to open, places difficult to navigate and generally unappealing places.

Beardlee’s article will be of interest to design educators as well as practitioners. It focuses on examining everyday interactions with commonplace items with analysis of several examples. The aim of the paper is to encourage strategies for educating designers to be more inclusive. 

The title of the article is, Inclusive, High Quality Decisions? Macro/Micro Design Impacts within our Everyday Experiences, and was accessed from SEGD.org Universal Design webpage.

Abstract:  Age and physical ability are natural filters for assessing the successes of designed objects, messages, and experiences. Design problem solving contributes (or not) to the resolution of challenges faced by aging and/or physically challenged individuals as they interact with products and contexts in the built environment. This paper examines some design details, solutions, and situations that impact everyday inclusivity and quality of experience, and suggests approaches toward understanding and increasing interaction success for all of us.

The comparisons presented in this work are intended to initiate an evolving platform for the discussion and development of design education strategies and content that prioritize aging and physical ability issues. Some familiar macro and micro examples have been chosen to illuminate everyday user interactions, challenges, and considerations. Ideally, increased exposure to these aspects, through audience-, age-, and ability-related projects, courses, and curriculum, will strengthen awareness and empathy in young design students, and encourage thoughtful, and more inclusive, design in the future.

Online learning: does it work for everyone?

Online learning is not new for many higher education students and teachers. Accessibility of online content is improving but there is still a way to go. Students with hearing loss are at a greater disadvantage than many others. Hearing loss is not something you only get as you age. Many young people aren’t even aware they have a hearing loss. An article in The Conversation discusses the issues and provides links to some resources.

Students with hearing loss rarely speak up about it, so lecturers will never know who is missing out or how many are missing out. Regardless, all students learn better with captioning. There are some myths about the cost of captioning. Yes, before Google and YouTube developed Do-It-Yourself captioning, it was expensive to get videos captioned. But times have moved on. However, live captioning with a stenographer is another matter.

The title of the article is, How to help students with a hearing impairment as courses move online. It has good, easy to do advice.

If you want more tips on making sure everyone is included in videoconferences, have a look at the previous post, Videoconferencing: Zoom in to hear. 

Why make your podcast accessible?

A graphic with a headset and the word podcast.There are at least two reasons to make podcasts accessible. First, they reach more people, and second search engines like it. It’s the same reason why descriptions of images are important. Both reasons help grow your audience. A third reason is that transcripts help you to find the content at a later date. If you have transcripts for every show, you can search and reference what was discussed on your show at any point. In essence:

It’s the right thing to do
People with disabilities benefit
Other people benefit
You benefit – Your content is indexed
Your reach increases
There may be legal requirements

The Podcast Accessibility website has more detail on the list above about making podcasts accessible and why it is important for everyone. It also has other useful information apart from transcripts. It’s an easy read.

Videoconferencing: Zoom in to hear

Nine people are shown on a computer monitor.Online communication is great for staying connected, but it is not kind to people with hearing loss. A great blog post gives some excellent tips that everyone should consider when using Zoom. You just don’t know who in your group is finding it difficult to hear.

There are two main issues: One is clarity of speech due to inadequate microphone, sitting too far away from the screen, background noise and/or the echo from the room (like the bathroom sound). The other is the delay between sound and vision so lip reading is impossible. And of course, talking across each other because of the transmission delay.

The blog post, Making the Most of Zoom, explains how the features can be used to best advantage for everyone to hear what’s going on. For example – how to change the video layout so that the active speaker is the largest view to make lip reading easier. Using the chat facility, lighting, muting when not speaking, and using the wave-hand function to get heard in turn. While this is focused on Zoom, many of the tips can be applied to other online apps and programs. There are links in the article to other resources and Zoom information.

You might also be interested in The Conversation article, How to help students with hearing impairment as courses move online. 

Teaching and learning accessibility

A man in a black shirt sits at a desk with two computer screens in front of him.The technology industry needs more people who understand both technical and accessibility aspects of design. But they are hard to find. That’s because teaching accessibility and inclusion in university courses is still in its infancy. Helping technology students to get their head around accessibility for people with disability has its challenges. In his article based on a case study, Julian Brinkley discusses the challenges for teachers and students, but says it can be done.

“By the conclusion of the semester students were able to both describe the characteristics of various disabilities and how they relate to computer and technology use while demonstrating a baseline ability to design technologies for use by disabled persons.

“These findings collectively suggest that stand alone courses focused on accessibility may prove effective at supporting the goal of introducing topics of accessibility to computer science students and students from related disciplines.”

The title of the article is, Participation at What Cost? Teaching Accessibility Using Participatory Design: An Experience Report. 

Abstract: As institutions respond to market demand in their training of the next generation of technology designers, there is an increasing awareness of the need to add accessibility to computer science and informatics curricula. Advocates have suggested three strategies for including accessibility and discussions of disability in courses: changing a lecture, adding a lecture or adding a new course. In this paper we report on our experiences with the latter; incorporating accessibility within two new graduate and undergraduate inclusive design courses taught concurrently. We found that while the use of participatory design was decidedly effective in supporting student learning and ameliorating ableist attitudes, creating and managing teams comprised of students and visually impaired co-designers proved challenging. Despite these challenges, overall, students demonstrated steady growth in their grasp of inclusive design concepts as they tackled accessibility challenges through a series of mobility-related group projects. Efficiencies were also realized through the concurrent teaching of both courses though the pace of course deliverables proved challenging at times for undergraduates. We argue that a review of our experience may help others interested in teaching accessibility related courses, specifically in course design and execution.

This paper is from the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’20), March 11–14, 2020, Portland, OR, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 7 pages. 

You might also be interested in another paper from the same symposium: A Systematic Analysis of Accessibility in Computing Education Research.

From the conclusion, “Our study highlights two main needs in computing accessibility education. The first need is to create a research roadmap for covering and reinforcing accessibility knowledge with clear learning objectives and evaluation methods across several core and elective courses. Second, to implement this roadmap, we need to create and investigate the efficacy of usable accessibility teaching materials to support instructors.”

Autism and cultural diversity

A brightly coloured logo in the style of a jig saw puzzle for Autism Awareness.People with autism are speaking out, and we are learning more about neurodiversity through practice and research. Consequently, it’s time to look at who is doing the practice and research. Is the family’s cultural background taken into account? If so, do researchers and practitioners know how to adapt? A journal article from the UK sheds a little light on the subject. It’s open access, but you have to click on the link, BAME report 2018 revised.docx.

The title of the paper is, Autism in Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Communities: A Report on The First Autism Voice UK Symposium. 

Abstract: 

Little is known about the way autism is interpreted and accepted among the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) populations in the United Kingdom (UK). This report summarises a symposium on autism in the UK BAME community in 2018 organised by Autism Voice UK, Participatory Autism Research Collective (PARC) and the Critical Autism/Disabilities Studies Research Group (CADS) at London South Bank University (LSBU).

The stance a family or community take about a condition like autism is influenced by their cultural background. The aims of the symposium were to highlight different perspectives about autism in BAME communities and to preserve the cultural dignity of the community in supporting autistic members. Beliefs about autism, diagnosis, acceptance and support for autistic people from a specific cultural perspective of BAME communities must be cautiously interpreted by autism professionals because beliefs vary among different cultural groups.

Thematic analysis of feedback from participants yielded the following foci. Firstly, cultural, ethnic and religious sensitivities were important to participants who felt that these were often ignored by non-BAME professionals. Secondly, the need for collaboration to improve autism awareness within the community and understanding by professionals of the intersectionality between autism and identity in BAME families was prioritised.

Thirdly, issues around feelings of stigma were common, but delegates felt that these were not well understood beyond people identifying as BAME. An action plan was created which highlighted raising public awareness through community engagement, improving access to information for parents, and culturally aware autism education for professionals and BAME communities.

Designing inclusive surveys

Picture of a hand holding a pen and filling in boxes on a survey formWe all know that no matter how objective we try to be, biases exist. Researchers try to avoid them when they design surveys. But it isn’t easy as bias is by nature invisible to the owner. So a bit of help is handy. Using a screening survey to hire people can disadvantage people from diverse backgrounds for several reasons. Most researchers know the usual pitfalls, but perhaps not those relating to ethnic diversity and cognitive differences. Or for people with disability. A really helpful part of this short article is the reference list. Here are just two items:

A Catalog of Biases in Questionnaires includes sources of bias, issues with questionnaire design, and problems with wording, language use, and formatting, plus more. There’s lots of examples too. By Choi, B. C., & Pak, A. W. (2005)

Another good one is about integrating universal design into questionnaires. The focus is on people with learning disabilities. Of course, this also suits people who find reading English as a second language difficult as well. So the authors recommend that instead of making accommodations for people with learning disabilities, the questionnaire should be designed to suit all participants. Lots of good information here. By Goegan, et al, (2018). 

The title of the article is,  Removing Bias from a Hiring Survey for a Diverse Applicant Pool.  

 

Weaving for inclusion

A woman is in a power wheelchair. She is discussing with three other people.Being with, and watching users is the best way to understand how to design software. This is particularly important when focusing on making designs inclusive. A university in Scotland weaves concepts of inclusion and accessible design throughout students’ undergraduate degree gradually introducing them to more complex inclusive design factors. This model could be used in any design discipline. The difficult part is likely to be having teachers who are confident interacting with people with disability and able to support students as they interact with different user groups. The title of the article is “Weaving Accessibility Through an Undergraduate Degree” available from ResearchGate.  

From the conclusion:  “Across all years of our undergraduate programme, we support students to interact with a wide range of users, with a wide range of abilities. Students’ communication with the end users is important, to build confidence on both sides. Students engage with older adults first, as they can typically relate to them more easily and are encouraged to engage in a relaxed environment, e.g. only one note-taker is required. As students progress, they work with users with increasingly complex communication challenges. For students not familiar with disabilities, this can be a difficult experience, and so the communication is supported by teaching and research staff. Students may have personal perceptions of what they expect from this group, but as they build a relationship with the users these initial perceptions are adjusted. This gives our students motivation for the inclusion of accessibility in software development and we aspire for them to champion accessibility within industry and develop inclusive software as a result.”

Abstract: Globally, increasing numbers of people experience accessibility issues related to technology use. At the University of Dundee, we have developed a degree programme that aims to graduate socially-aware computing scientists who can develop for a range of access needs. To achieve this, we engage our students on a supported pathway of exploration, empathy and understanding. Students collaborate with user groups of older adults, adults with aphasia, and users of Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC). This practical experience leads to an understanding of the needs of the end-user and the need to develop for ‘people who are not like me’.  

Highlighting the ‘Dark Side’

young people sit at a table which has a large sheet of paper and writing implements. They appear to be discussing something.Critical Design is a way of challenging stereotypes and prejudice. It is a way of looking at the world from the “dark side” of design thinking. A paper presented at a recent engineering and product design conference explains how design students responded to a series of workshops using the critical design method. The process does not focus on designing solutions. Rather, it focuses on designing to highlight the problem. The idea is to get the participants to think about the problem in greater depth. This is where satire and irony can be used to convey the message of stigma and exclusion. Students were also challenged to consider user empowerment, or how they might reshape societal and cultural stereotypes.

The authors explain, “it is essential that they are armed with design methods for tackling the challenges of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Furthermore, they must gain valuable experience of interdisciplinary work in order to be prepared for the ‘real’ world, outside of university”.

They conclude the article with, “Whether CD alone can help in battling stereotypes, prejudices, discrimination, and stigma – in so doing achieving a more diverse and inclusive society – we don’t quite know but are sure that it’s a good way to start!

The title of the paper is, Addressing the issue of stigma-free design through critical design workshops.  

Abstract: 

Stereotypes and prejudices are a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon that can impinge on peoples’ wellbeing. Moreover, the power of public stigma can make users of certain products experience discrimination, alienation, and inequality. Such experiences increase the likelihood of individuals rejecting products, services, environments, etc. altogether, often depriving them of e.g. safety, efficiency, and independence.

In a worst-case scenario this can lead to a stigmatised condition that triggers further inequality and exclusion. In an increasingly complex world, it is imperative that those responsible for addressing future needs, challenges, and demands, i.e. the next generation of designers, architects, engineers, etc., are adequately equipped as regards methods and tools for battling existing stereotypes and prejudices related to social growth and development in society.

Through this, they will ensure that stigma-free design is a priority when initiating, planning, and executing future projects. The purpose of this paper is to describe what happens when critical design is used to explore the stigma associated with existing products, services, environments, etc. in the context of interdisciplinary workshops, and to discuss the results so far.

Furthermore, the paper examines whether and how this upside-down way of thinking about and performing design is a good contribution to the fields of design, architecture, engineering, etc. as a method of both teaching and learning about equality, diversity, and inclusion.