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:
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- Design guidance
- Accessible cities
- Urban design
- Accessibility and universal design
- Access to culture and mobility
- Environments for older people
- Sensory environment
- Wellbeing and health
- Higher education
- Digital tools
- Assistive devices
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The conference attracted delegates and speakers from 20 countries. This is a good document for introducing new people to the breadth of universal design.