What best practice should be followed when designing for disability?

Sometimes designing for disability can be something simple such as the automatic doors we have around Futures place. We have colleagues who use a variety of mobility aids to get around, so the automatic doors just makes things easier.

There's also a lot of recent and exciting innovation in designing products for accessibility, such as XRAI's glasses that turn spoken words into subtitles displayed on a pair of glasses to help the hard of hearing participate in the conversations around them, bionic exoskeletons that may one day replace wheelchairs and video game controllers specifically designed for gamers with dexterity challenges.

Have you seen any examples of good design that should be written up as best practice when designing for disability? When undertaking a project specifically aimed at designing for disability, what considerations should be made? 

Would love to hear your insights, tips, and real-world examples of designing with disability and accessibility in mind.

Parents
  • The obvious one, but one which sometimes gets missed, is to ask disabled people or a charity such as Scope (Disability inclusion for businesses - Scope for Business) for their guidance and following the social model of disability which puts the onus on society rather than disabled people to remove the barriers created by society which is usually the disabling factors.

    Examples of good design - level boarding in certain areas of the tube/rail network has facilitated better access and is something the rest of the rail network could learn from and extend.

  • Totally agree Kathryn.  I had to go and do a few jobs across Scotland so had to go from Watford to London then onto various places across Scotland via tube and rail with a wheeled stacking tool box which weighed about 50 to 60KG.  Getting on and off some trains/tubes was an absolute mission as was navigating some of the train/tube stations.  Designers for public transport need to take a good hard look at these issues.  I can only speculate how complicated it would be for a person in a wheelchair.

Reply
  • Totally agree Kathryn.  I had to go and do a few jobs across Scotland so had to go from Watford to London then onto various places across Scotland via tube and rail with a wheeled stacking tool box which weighed about 50 to 60KG.  Getting on and off some trains/tubes was an absolute mission as was navigating some of the train/tube stations.  Designers for public transport need to take a good hard look at these issues.  I can only speculate how complicated it would be for a person in a wheelchair.

Children
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