If you’re here at radically-included.com, you’ve seen the words Universal Design plastered all over this blog, and I wouldn’t be ashamed if you’re unfamiliar with the term. Universal Design is a relatively newly recognized set of design principles that began its evolution in the 1970s as discrimination against people with disabilities was addressed for the first time in American history. Less than a decade before, in 1964, the Civil Rights Act had been passed, which at long last began to prohibit discrimination based on race, religion, and national origin. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 took another step by prohibiting discrimination based on disability in federal programs and by recipients of federal financial assistance. Section 504 was the first civil rights law passed that began to change the literal physical landscape for the disabled community by giving them the right to reasonable accommodations. While 504 was another long-overdue step towards equality, it still fell short of protecting people with disabilities from discrimination in many employment situations and public accommodations in the private sector. It wouldn’t be until 17 years later, in 1990, that these gaps would be addressed with the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, commonly known as the ADA. American designers of multitudes of products and physical spaces now had to consider the accommodations needed throughout the disabled community. These laws gave birth to the first generation of Universal Designers.

As defined by the National Disability Authority’s Center for Excellence in Universal Design, universal design is the design and composition of an environment so that it can be accessed, understood, and used to the greatest extent possible by all people regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. An environment (or any building, product, or service in that environment) should be designed to meet the needs of all people who wish to use it. This is not a special requirement for the benefit of only a minority of the population. It is a fundamental condition of good design. If an environment is accessible, usable, convenient, and a pleasure to use, everyone benefits. By considering the diverse needs and abilities of all throughout the design process, universal design creates products, services, and environments that meet peoples’ needs. Simply put, universal design is good design.

It can often be detrimental to the causes of inclusivity and equality that universal design is looked at as an extension of the needs of the disabled. Undoubtedly, the disabled community is critical to exploring how universal design integrates into our everyday life. Still, it would be absurd to think that they are the only group that benefits from utilizing the universal design process and principles. For example, voice dictation, one of the universally designed products we have recently come to love and quickly taken for granted as we do with most modern-day conveniences. When I personally started using this assistive technology, it was out of necessity so that I could still utilize my computer. I dislocated my neck when I was 25 years old, which left me experiencing the complexities of paralysis and re-learning how to do nearly every task of daily living. While I still had some use of my arms, I could slowly peck away at my keyboard with little accuracy at first; it was voice dictation that allowed me to scribe anything longer than a short sentence. At the time, the voice dictation technology required specific computer software and a special headset. Over the years since, dictation technology has become integrated into nearly every opportunity we have to create digital text. What started as a solution for people with movement and dexterity issues has evolved through the universal design process into something that any of us can beneficially integrate into our daily lives. Today it is common to see people with no specific disability speaking a few sentences into their wristwatch, utilizing the convenience and benefits of universal design.

As a wheelchair user, it’s easy to make the case that our society can benefit significantly from the integration of universal design. The ultimate goal is to develop everything from products to spaces to communications that are accessible, understood, and utilized to the greatest extent possible by the most diverse community possible. It’s not surprising that many businesses integrate the universal design process into their processes. It is a good business decision to consider universal design as there are many social and legal benefits of adopting universal design principles. In each project Universal Designers approach, they contemplate the benefits to the individual, society, and the businesses they serve as well as legislation and standards. The universal design process not only promotes compliance but has excellent potential for improving accessibility and usability based on the minimum requirements required by law. When we put this thinking at the beginning of our design process, we can also save considerable monetary resources by approaching the project from the broadest perspective possible. You can imagine how easily a detail critical to a particular group of people can be left out simply because they were not represented in the design process.

It has become clear as we’ve entered the 21st-century that social movements addressing inequalities of all kinds have taken center stage. We live in a global community that has become increasingly closer and more intertwined through our technology and energy use. We are inevitably on a path to better understanding each other and recognizing the potential for universal design to incorporate solutions that hugely impact how we utilize our products, services, and environments. The proliferation of technology has created the ability for more of us to become designers and implement the changes we want to see in our society. As we explore that space, it is essential to remember that we cannot alone understand the needs of everyone, and collaboration is a prerequisite for creating a genuinely equitable design. My goal with this blog and the entire Radically Included cause is to share with you just how important adopting this way of designing can be for all of our benefits. While we live in a world where our diversity has often divided us, I believe universal design is helping us break down these barriers and moving us into a new age of understanding one another.

If you’ve read along this far, it’s been my pleasure to take you through why it is so important to me and why I’ve chosen to be an evangelist of this relatively straightforward design approach. It is straightforward in that it breaks down into seven well-defined and easy-to-follow principles. Principles that show us it’s critical to our success to think inclusively during any design process we enter into. When we are designing a product, space, or place for a specific group of people, we need to understand that the needs of the individual will always present us with diversity needing an accommodation. We can address these accommodations by approaching our design with broad inclusivity in mind. Thinking about my environment more inclusively has become hugely influential in my life. As a wheelchair user, I am part of a group of people who move about this world in a way that is not always or even typically accommodated. My wheelchair is the product that has led me to understand how we all benefit from universal design.