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Designing for inclusivity: Assessing the accessibility of everyday products

Designing for inclusivity: Assessing the accessibility of everyday products

Cardoso, C., Keates, S. ORCID: 0000-0002-2826-672X and Clarkson, P. J. (2002) Designing for inclusivity: Assessing the accessibility of everyday products. In: Proceedings of CWUAAT '02, 1st Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT '02). Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, pp. 47-51.

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Abstract

The older adult population in most developed countries is growing slowly, but continuously (Laslett, 1996). Several functional changes occur with age which may result in a decrease of perceptual, cognitive and motor skills (Smith et al., 2000). In spite of this well-known trend, designers continue to design instinctively for “ablebodied” young people (Coleman, 1997). The result is products that are generally difficult to be used by elderly citizens and people with disabilities (Keates et al., 2000). Clearly new inclusive design approaches are required to interpret and evaluate the range of functional capabilities of this sector of the population and include them into mainstream design. The aim of this paper is to present a range of potential methods for assessing product accessibility. Although these methods provide valuable feedback about a product’s accessibility, many of them lack the ability to be liked with actual population data. An alternative assessment method, structured assessment, is proposed which enables designers to quantify with reasonable accuracy the numbers of users excluded from product usage.

Item Type: Conference Proceedings
Title of Proceedings: Proceedings of CWUAAT '02, 1st Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT '02)
Additional Information: [1] Presented at the conference, which was held at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 25th-27th March, 2002 [2] Sponsored by Consignia
Uncontrolled Keywords: designing for inclusivity - assessing the accessibility of everyday products
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
T Technology > T Technology (General)
T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group: Faculty of Engineering & Science
Related URLs:
Last Modified: 14 Oct 2016 09:31
URI: http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/12955

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