UD2014

This work, based on study cases of museum accessibility policy, aims to describe and to analyze the conception, implementation and the use by visitors of visits proposed by several French museums in Paris (Musée du Quai Branly, Cité de la musique, Louvre museum, … ). The study cases are spring from printing data (promotional leaflets, informations sheets, press releases.. ) and formals interviews in order to catch the origin, conception and ideology of the visits. They also result from informal interviews and participant observation and immersion to get data about the use by visitors of universal design products, such as the “tactile gallery” at the Louvre Museum and the display named “Touch the music” at the Cité de la musique.
The pre-results highlight that the tactile gallery of the Louvre has been made especially for people with visual impairments, but everyone is welcomed to visit it. This gallery is not really an universal design product, it is more close from the adaptive approach, developed by Stary in 1997 [1] . However, this gallery, which is especially focused on touching, reflects a new way to approach art and to discover sculptures, which is not only based on a visual approach. It demonstrates the possibility to “see with hands and fingers”. The display “ Touch the music” at the Cité de la musique is organized in an universal design way. It appears as a proactive product which is not been made starting from special needs, but which has been realized in a multi sensorial way to discover and enjoy musical instruments.

This design case presents the process to develop Empathear, a system that simulates the experience of “hearing voices”. Hearing voices can be a symptom of mental illness such as schizophrenia. The voices can affect greatly the life of voice hearers. Empathear aims to show family members a part of the experience their loved ones live everyday, with the goal of creating the conditions for empathy. Empathear consists of a wearable device that records environmental noise and wirelessly plays voices that react to the environments through subtle earphones. An App was also developed with the same capabilities as the scarf. Initial testing with families of people with schizophrenia and assessments by the Supporting Families Organization New Zealand indicate that Empathear can be a helpful tool for creating a better understanding of hearing voices.

Creating new tactile elements for the new Stations in the Citytunnelprojekt in Malmö Sweden as a significant part to create an universell design in Swedens most modern Infrastructure. The station Triangeln is shown as a particular good example. It has been awardwed with many awards, for instance the most important national architectual prize.

Universal design is not taken care of adequately in many planning processes, because little has been done to utilize different user experiences during the planning process. This differs from the maritime sector where the communication and also the cooperation between different groups of stakeholders, customers, suppliers, users and experts are more common. Our contention is that the competition which occur between different solutions in the maritime sector, and which might result in pressure for innovation, does not occur in the same way in public sector.

As the world has a rapidly growing aging population, more and more attention must be paid to product design and development for older adults. Designer should understand the change of aged function, so that they can design product which can satisfy older adults need. Experiment investigated the effects of color combinations of text/background on reading performance. Results showed that nine better color combinations of text / background, including orange / indigo, yellow / red, yellow / green, yellow / indigo, green / white, indigo / yellow, white / red, white/green and white/blue, however, two bad color combinations of text / background, including green / orange and green / blue. Results of this study can be widely applied to various product interfaces, e.g. test displayed on computer monitors, tablet PC interfaces, touch screens, and electronic directories.

This study is considered about installation of some graphic floor sign in actual railroad station. The condition for design is discussed with people with low vision. And the investigation of the placement is carried out under a partnership of people with low vision. It is installed after discussing with local government administrators. Finally, it is installed around two railroad stations after investigating the size, the form, and the content of this graphic floor sign under a partnership of people with low vision. And it is conducted the user survey. As the result, it is delayed to find it with ordinary passengers, however it is easy to search and recognize it when found it once. It turned out that it is an effective sign system also including construction or a cost.

Optical Mark Reader Answer Sheet (OMR_AS) has been universally used in the education field. As marking OMR_AS needs physical skill of both hands, some students have difficulty to finish it within a limited time. To improve this situation, two assistive devices were developed, and an evaluation experiment was carried out by 6 non-disabled students and one student with physical disability in upper limbs. As indicated in the results, some of the non-disabled students could mark OMR_AS in a shorter time, but each student’s workload increased. As the reference data, the disabled student could mark OMR_AS with these assistive devices, without increase of workload. There was significant difference in workload between the non-disabled students and the disabled student (P=0.01).

As lives grow busier — and waistlines grow larger — a number of nutritionists are calling for Americans to reduce their risk of obesity-related health problems by cooking at home more and eating out less. We need to encourage home cooking. To do this we need to make cooking at home an attractive, viable alternative to eating out and develop kitchen design strategies and educational programs to increase home cooking and dining for all family members.

We have developed a universally designed kitchen that will provide a supportive environment for all family members to be involved in food preparation. Our presentation includes a kitchen plan and illustrations of the UD features designed to support healthy food preparation techniques for all.

This kitchen and other Universal Design Case Studies are described in the recently published book Universal Design: Principles and Models and the accompanying Instructors Manual.

The needs and abilities of people with disabilities are diverse. Yet, even when they have supportive devices to compensate for functional limitations, those features are fixed and are only able to support some abilities some of the time. The purpose of this project is to develop a smart bathroom environment capable of assessing an individual’s abilities at any point in time and spontaneously adjusting supportive environmental features to accommodate those abilities. Specifically, the study will: 1) observe simulated toilet and shower/bathtub use in a state-of-the-art bathroom laboratory with embedded sensors and automated adjustment of fixtures and hardware; 2) develop algorithms that predict support needs; 3) integrate algorithms with the smart technologies to control the physical environment; and 4) evaluate the effectiveness of the smart bathroom system.

Targeted and co-ordinated measures can convince businesses of the benefits of barrier-free solutions and the concept of a Design for All. The concept is attractive to a wide range of consumer groups, and offers businesses clear potential for a commercially successful implementation.