UDiP (Universal Design in Practice)

This 3-year NIDRR-funded project is officially titled "Analyzing Universal Design Resource Needs for practitioners in industry and government." We will investigate stakeholders in industry and government who are involved in the process of creating and purchasing universally designed products. Universal Design has been defined as "The design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design" [1]. Universal design targets mainstream products, and specifically their use by all through accommodation of functional limitations such as use without vision, without hearing etc., regardless of the cause of that limitation (the user's situation, environment, or from a disability).

In this project, the practical use of print and web resources by stakeholders will be studied by means of field observations and laboratory experiments. The motivation for the studies stems from the continued lack of universally designed products available on the market, despite recent legislation that was intended to boost developments in this area. It is thus critical to determine the utility of various current and in-development universal design resources in order to provide academic, governmental, and standards institutions with a more complete picture of the needs and behaviors of those on the front-lines of electronic device production, with respect to universal design.