The Centre for Excellence in Universal Design in Ireland has a comprehensive list that covers all the myths and misinformation about the purpose of universal design. Briefly, the 10 things to know about universal design are:
Universal design strives to improve the original design concept by making it more inclusive
Universally designed products can have a high aesthetic value
Universal design is much more than just a new design trend
Universal design does not aim to replace the design of products targeted at specific markets
Universal design is not another name for compliance with accessible design standards
Universal design benefits more people than older people and people with disabilities
Universal design can be undertaken by any designer, not just specialists
Universal design should be integrated throughout the design process
Universal design is not just about ‘one size fits all’
A universally designed product is the goal: universal design is the process
Editor’s comment: the CEUD website is looking a little dated, but the content remains valid and is good for newcomers to the topic. There are several guidelines for practitioners too. See more detail about these 10 things and other resources on the Centre for Excellence in Universal Designwebsite. There are more explanations in the What is Universal Designsection of this website.
3rd Generation universal design
One of the conundrums of the quest for inclusion, is that individuals have to identify as excluded so that they can get included. That’s because the people already included are doing the including by deciding whether to invite you in. What if inclusion was thought about as “nonclusion”? This is the proposition in a paper on 3rd generation universal design.
“Nonclusive design means design that resists categorisations of bodies/roles and that does not come with predefined or presupposed limits in terms of who it is meant for.
The authors say that “nonclusive design” is an essential element in the shift towards 3rd generation universal design. They define nonclusive design as a design that resists categorisations of bodies and roles. It does not come with with predetermined limits of who it is meant for. Therefore designs incorporate human diversity without reference to existing or traditional ways of doing things.
Nonclusive design is about intersectional thinking focused on unity rather than separation.
The title of the paper is, Towards 3rd Generation Universal Design: Exploring Nonclusive Design. Universal design is more than 50 years old. The first generation began with wheelchair users and the public built environment. The second generation brought additional excluded groups into focus. But the real aim of universal design is to have no excluded groups at all – the 3rd generation concept.
Not yet for everyone
The authors argue that while universal design is for everyone, thinking largely remains in the first generation of universal design. By creating a new word, nonclusion, they hope it takes thinking to a place with difference is a fundamental element of being human.
Creating a new word might help, but regardless, we are still thinking about a future that is yet to exist.
If we have nonclusive design, will a change of name from universal design change existing mindsets?
The issue is also discussed in a 2009 paper,Turning Back Time for Inclusion for Today as Well as Tomorrow. Inclusion is problematic because it requires those who are already included to invite excluded people into the group. Semantics can be important. What we need is inclusiveness – that’s where inclusion has already happened and there are no exclusions. Inclusion is a futuristic concept because it is something we are striving for. If we were inclusive, no discussion would be needed.
From the abstract
In this paper, we identify and describe early signs of a shift towards 3rd generation UD, of which “nonclusive design” is an essential part. Nonclusive design means design that resists categorisations of bodies/roles and that does not come with predefined or presupposed limits in terms of who it is meant for.
We outline seven themes characterising the shift towards nonclusive design:
from included to undefined users
from person to function
from adaptism to variation
from sparation to convergence
from reactive to proactive
from unaware to aware
from explicit to tacit
Nonclusive design directs attention to context instead of the individual, focusing on possibilities, functions and facilities. It highlights variation and unity rather than separation.
Nonclusive design presupposes awareness, knowledge and proactive development void of adaptism. It incorporates human variation without reiterating patterns of norm-deviation.
We argue that the continued growth of universal design demands, is part of, and contributes to a shift in culture, with nonclusive, intersectional thinking as a key future driver. In such a culture, 3rd generation universal design can contribute as a common guiding mindset, as a source for innovation, as a way to listen for diversity
Images created for the conference presentation, Turning Back Time for Today as well as Tomorrow.
Toilet signage and nonclusion
A further paper by the same research group discusses three versions of toilet signage in more detail than the paper above. The purpose is to find a way to be inclusive without depicting exceptions.
Addition – adding more pictograms of different persons
Combination – using composite pictograms
Nonclusion – not depicting persons, bodies or roles at all.
Image shows the version with additions
The title of the paper is, Moving beyond human bodies on display – signs of a shift in categorisation. Scroll down the list of papers to reach the paper which is in English. This paper is prelude to further research. The key issue underpinning this work is that the quest for inclusion relies on “the included” to do the including.
“Diversity is being asked to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.” This is a great quote from Verna Myers. She is referring to the workplace and the employment and advancement of women and people of colour. It is relevant to all other groups because diversity and inclusion are both part of the movement for more inclusive and equitable societies.
The Harvard Business Review discusses this issue in Diversity doesn’t stick without inclusion. It is one thing to have a diverse population, but that doesn’t mean equity or inclusion will automatically follow. Diversity and inclusion are often lumped together in the employment context. They are assumed to be the same thing. But this is not the case.
In the workplace, diversity equals representation. Attracting diverse talent requires full participation to foster innovation and growth. This is inclusion. Getting diverse talent is one thing, including them fully is another.
Diversity & Inclusion: Start Here
The Commons Social Change Library is about social change and driving social movements in Australia. While the context of their guide is about driving social change, most of the information is applicable in any situation.
The Diversity & Inclusion: Start Here guide introduces key concepts and links to other resources. The key point is that inclusion is a social change movement and we can all do our part by including marginalised people in our ranks. That’s whether it’s the workforce, our local sporting team or our social change campaigns.
Carly Findlay is a disability activist who reminds us that disability is part of diversity. Carly’s video explains her experience. Judy Heumann’s TED talk is also worth a look.
Before people can get to an event they usually need information. The Internet is usually the first stop. So it’s important to Improve your website accessibility.
There are many more resources on this website – you don’t need to be a campaigner to benefit from them.
The Commons Social Change Library is a not for profit organisation committed to educating for community action. They collect, curate and distribute the key lessons and resources of progressive movements around Australia and across the globe.
Editor’s note: I co-wrote a paper on inclusionbeing something where you have to wait for the “mainstream” group to invite you in. Inclusiveness is something that is present, it is happening now. You can see the slideshow version too which has some explanatory graphics.
The Victorian State Disability Plan has a great introduction that includes language and terminology. It acknowledges there is no one right, or universal way to conceptualise disability. That’s because people perceive disability in culturally specific ways. Some people are proud to identify themselves as disabled, whereas others don’t want their disability to define them. Similarly, many autistic and neurodiverse people don’t see autism as a disability. They just see autism at a different way of interacting with the world. The State Disability Plan 2022-2026 is titled, Inclusive Victoria.
From the introduction
Here is a nicely worded section from the introduction on language:
“Language is a powerful tool for changing community attitudes, promoting inclusion and fostering disability pride. Throughout history, people with disability have fought for changes to language that reflect their human rights. We know language is always changing, and we recognise that words are powerful and have different meaning for different people. We recognise that people with disability have different preferences regarding how they describe their disability.”
This introduction explains how language is used throughout the document. It highlights the real importance language plays in community attitudes towards people with disability. A good example for other government documents and policies that are based on a marginalised group.
The plan contains facts and figures about the prevalence of disability and other statistics. The international, national, state and local government obligations are laid out in a straightforward table format. The key elements of the plan are:
Inclusive communities: Changing attitudes, transport, digital inclusion, sport and tourism.
Health, housing and wellbeing: Health, mental health housing, NDIS, children and families.
Fairness and Safety: Emergencies, advocacy, abuse and neglect, justice system, and gender identity.
Opportunity and pride: Education, employment, voice and leadership, pride and recognition.
Systemic reform
Most disability plans are action plans. This document includes systemic reform which should underpin actions and outcomes. The six systemic reforms are listed as:
Co-design with people with disability
Aboriginal self-determination
Intersectional approaches
Accessible communications and universal design
Disability confident and inclusive workforces’
Effective data and outcomes reporting
Inclusive Victoria is nicely presented with relatively plain language throughout.
The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) has an Easy Read guide to the Disability Strategy 2021-2031. However, you need good reading and web navigation skills to get to it. The information is spaced out over 44 pages in the PDF version.
The key objective ofthe strategyis about living a life you want to live. The goals are:
Working and earning money
Inclusive homes and communities – living where you want to live
Rights for fair treatment and feeling safe
Getting support as an individual and to be part of the community
Universal design is most commonly associated with the built environment. This is where the physical barriers to inclusion are most visible. But the concept of universal design goes beyond this to include cognitive accessibility.
Emily Steel writes a concise article on how universal design informs cognitive accessibility standards. There are many types of cognitive disability and it would be difficult to have separate standards for each one. So the working group has adopted the Universal Design for Learning framework to promote better design for all people.
The working group has published two standards since forming in 2015. The first provides guidelines for the design of products to support daily time management. The second is about the design and development of systems, products, services and built environments. A third standard is under development. This one sets out the requirements for reporting the cognitive accessibility of products and systems.
As an international standard, working group participants come from around the world and include people with diverse cognition. Online meetings replaced the face to face workshops during the COVID pandemic.
The article, published in Design for All India Newsletter, provides more detail about how the group works. It’s Article 2 in the October 2021 edition. The online Newsletter is produced in Verdana Bold and is fully justified and also includes a lot of Italicised text. This is not a universally designed publication.
The working group is keen to integrate lived experiences into the guidelines and any revisions. If you are interested in this work you can contact the Technical Committee Secretariat.
Dr Emily Steel is the Australian delegate on the International Standards Organization (ISO) cognitive accessibility working group. She also conducted a workshop at the Australian Universal Design Conference UD2021. Dr Steel is also a CUDA board member.
We have to stop ageism at the older end of the age spectrum. Why? Because it’s killing us. The World Health Organization, says older people who hold negative views about their own ageing will live 7.5 years less than people with positive attitudes. So where do these negative views come from? Everywhere it seems. Ageism is bad for your health because ageing is framed as a negative experience.
An article in the Sydney Morning Herald reports on this phenomenon. Ageist comments, such as “silly old duck” or “they are useless with technology” are socially accepted. Calling someone an “old dear” is not a term of endearment. Language matters because it is an expression of how we think. Ageism is yet to be properly recognised as damaging, unlike racism and sexism. But we must be careful with the term ageism.
Ageism is always referred to as an older age issue. However, it is not. Anyone of any age can be subject to ageism. In Europe, the only region with data on all age groups, younger people report more age discrimination than other age groups. Philip Taylor has more to say on this in his UD2021 presentation.
Ageism affects everyone. Children are brought up in a culture of age stereotypes that guide their behaviours towards people of different ages. They also learn how to perceive themselves at various stages of life.
The WHO says that ageism is everywhere – in our institutions and relationships to ourselves. For example:
Policies that support healthcare rationing by age,
Practices that limit younger people’s opportunities to contribute to decision-making in the workplace
Patronising behaviour used between older and younger people
Self-limiting behaviour based on our own ideas of what a certain age can or cannot do.
Two older women on a bird nest swing. A more positive image.
Ageism can change how we view ourselves, erode solidarity between generations, devalue or limit our ability to benefit from what younger and older populations can contribute. It can impact our health, longevity and well-being while also having far-reaching economic consequences. Ageism is associated with earlier death (by 7.5 years), poorer physical and mental health, and slower recovery from disability in older age.
Ageism also increases risky health behaviors, such as eating an unhealthy diet, drinking excessively or smoking, and reduces our quality of life. In the United States, one in every seven dollars spent on health care every year for the eight most expensive conditions was due to ageism (US$ 63 billion in total).
Who wants to refer to the instruction manual if they can avoid it? In the same way, standards documents get overlooked unless it’s mandatory to comply. But there is one standards document that is worth looking at. It can help us progress accessibility and universal design. On day two of UD2021 Conference, Emily Steel explained how the international accessibility standard works.
Emily Steel with the 11 Goals of the Guide.
The international standard has done all the thinking for us. The document guides standards committees as they write and update standards for their specific industry or profession. It is also useful for any committee developing guides or standards for accessibility and universal design. So, we don’t have to re-invent the wheel.
The Guide’s use of the the term “accessibility” relates closely to universal design. “The extent to which products, systems, services, environments and facilities can be used by people from a population with the widest range of characteristics and capabilities to achieve a specified goal in a specified context of use”.
The Guide has two main parts. The first describes user needs and 11 accessibility goals. These are similar to the 8 Goals of Universal Design. The second describes human characteristics and abilities, and design considerations.
Guide 71 was adapted by the European standards authority and is titled, CEN-CENLEC Guide 6. It is basically the same information. You can see a previous postabout this document.
There is also an Accessibility Masterlist by Gregg Vanderheiden. It’s a collaborative resource for understanding access features in digital applications. Also worth a look.
All standards should ensure they meet the goals of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Guide 71 shows how to do this.
Philanthropy is yet another barrier to overcome in the quest for inclusion. As a service, it too, should be universally designed. The underpinning principle of universal design is inclusion. It’s captured in the Sustainable Development Goals with the phrase, “leave no-one behind”. So let’s take a closer look at philanthropy and what that means.
Employment of people with disability and other marginalized groups in the philanthropy sector is one issue. Including people with disability within all grants is another. However, the disability sector is most often treated as a stand-alone area for receiving grants. This segregation is not helpful – disability should be included within all projects. The Disability Philanthropy website has three videos that explain more and a resource library.
Ryan Easterly explains, “Philanthropy needs to do a better job reflecting society and communities in general.” Funders should consider disability and the how it affects all aspects of life. There is hardly any issue that a foundation would fund that doesn’t impact or include disability.
Policy is often seen as the way to make change. But when it comes to being inclusive it hasn’t worked very well. If policies, codes and papers are not accessible to all stakeholders, how can we create inclusion? Janice Rieger says videos are more effective than policy.
The title of her short paper and workshop is, Reframing Universal Design: Creating Short Videos for Inclusion. Her research provides insights on how videos travel and reach different audiences. This results in a significant impact and enacted change and informed policy. Dr Rieger concludes that “video impacts more than policies, codes and papers ever can”.
Here is an extract from her paper:
“Video is a visceral medium, offering the opportunity to reframe universal design practice and education. It captures movements and can be co-created with people with disabilities. Videos co-created for inclusion encourage detailed and rich embodied knowledge and experiences because information is prompted by association with one’s surroundings. Significantly, videos have the capacity to excavate personalized knowledge of those with different abilities and uncover systems of exclusion that are often hidden or naturalized, and shamedly rendered invisible through policies, codes and papers.”
In a short video titled, Wandering on the Braille Trail, Sarah Boulton explains how she navigates the environment using her white cane and tactile ground markers.
How do you include people in decisions that will affect them when it’s not easy for them to participate? It’s a chicken and egg situation. So, asking people with disability to contribute takes more than a survey or a community meeting. It needs a much more thoughtful process. Janice Rieger has some thoughts on the right to participate and co-design polices and processes.
Public sector co-designing is an emerging field of practice. It provides the opportunity for creativity and innovative ideas. Reframing participatory engagement through a social justice lens takes us towards a co-designing process.
Editorial Introduction
“We are entering a new era in Australia as we envision a new disability strategy to replace the current national disability strategy (2010–2020). During this transition, we can reflect on and recognise the changing disability landscape in Australia and ensure that we create a just and inclusive Australian society. Recent consultations and reports have called for people with a disability to directly engage in designing the new disability strategy in Australia, but what does that entail, and how will the rights of people with disabilities be upheld throughout this process? This brief describes public sector co-designing practice—an emerging practice aiming to open up new trajectories for policy development through a co-design process and to provide best practice recommendations for the next disability strategy in Australia.”
The Centre for Excellence in Universal Design in Ireland has a comprehensive list that covers all the myths and misinformation about the purpose of universal design. Briefly, the 10 things to know about universal design are:
“Diversity is being asked to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.” This is a great quote from Verna Myers. She is referring to the workplace and the employment and advancement of women and people of colour. It is relevant to all other groups because diversity and inclusion are both part of the movement for more inclusive and equitable societies.
The Victorian State Disability Plan has a great introduction that includes language and terminology. It acknowledges there is no one right, or universal way to conceptualise disability. That’s because people perceive disability in culturally specific ways. Some people are proud to identify themselves as disabled, whereas others don’t want their disability to define them. Similarly, many autistic and neurodiverse people don’t see autism as a disability. They just see autism at a different way of interacting with the world. The State Disability Plan 2022-2026 is titled, 
The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) has an Easy Read guide to the Disability Strategy 2021-2031. However, you need good reading and web navigation skills to get to it. The information is spaced out over 44 pages in the PDF version. 
Universal design is most commonly associated with the built environment. This is where the physical barriers to inclusion are most visible. But the concept of universal design goes beyond this to include cognitive accessibility.
The working group has published two standards since forming in 2015. The first provides guidelines for the design of products to support daily time management. The second is about the design and development of systems, products, services and built environments. A third standard is under development. This one sets out the requirements for reporting the cognitive accessibility of products and systems. 
Philanthropy is yet another barrier to overcome in the quest for inclusion. As a service, it too, should be universally designed. The underpinning principle of universal design is inclusion. It’s captured in the Sustainable Development Goals with the phrase, “leave no-one behind”. So let’s take a closer look at philanthropy and what that means. 
Policy is often seen as the way to make change. But when it comes to being inclusive it hasn’t worked very well. If policies, codes and papers are not accessible to all stakeholders, how can we create inclusion? Janice Rieger says videos are more effective than policy.
How do you include people in decisions that will affect them when it’s not easy for them to participate? It’s a chicken and egg situation. So, asking people with disability to contribute takes more than a survey or a community meeting. It needs a much more thoughtful process. Janice Rieger has some thoughts on the right to participate and co-design polices and processes.