skip to main content
10.1145/1168987.1169003acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesassetsConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Are "universal design resources" designed for designers?

Published: 23 October 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Universal design (UD) is an approach to design that incorporates things which can be used by all people to the greatest extent possible. UD in information and communication technologies (ICTs) is of growing importance because standard ICTs have great potential to be usable by all people, including people with disabilities (PWDs). Currently, PWDs who need ICTs often have less access because the products have not been universally designed. We hypothesize that one of the reasons for the slow adoption of UD is that universal design resources (UDRs) are not adequate for facilitating designers' tasks. We investigated the usability of UDRs from designers' perspectives. A heuristic evaluation on eight selected UDRs was conducted, and the opinions of contributors to the content of these resources were collected through a web-based survey study. The results of the heuristic evaluation show that most of the investigated UDRs do not provide a clear central idea and fail to support the cognitive processes of designers. The results of the survey also confirmed that the content of these resources do not systematically address the needs of designers as end-users during the development process.

References

[1]
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board. Telecommunication Act Accessibility Guidelines. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://www.accessboard.gov/telecomm/rule.htm, 1998.
[2]
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board. Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/standards.htm, 2000.
[3]
Arizona Technology Access Program. Universal Design Resource List. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://www.nau.edu/ihd/aztap/factsheets/universal.shtml.
[4]
Burns, C. M., Vicente, K. J., Christoffersen, K., and Pawlak, W. S. Towards viable, useful and usable human factors design guidance. Applied Ergonomics, 28, 5/6 (1997), 311--322.
[5]
COST 219 European Telecommunications Forum. Accessibility for All to Services and Terminals for Next Generation Networks. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://www.cost219.org.
[6]
The National Disability Authority. Accessibility Guidelines for Public Access Terminals. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://accessit.nda.ie/technologyindex_2.html.
[7]
Kantner, L., Shroyer, R., and Rosenbaum, S. Structured Heuristic Evaluation of Online Documentation in Proceedings of IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC 2002) (Portland, OR, USA, September 17-20, 2002).
[8]
Keates, S., Lebbon, C., and Clarkson, J. Investigating Industry Attitudes to Universal Design in Proceedings of Rehabilitation Engineering and assistive technology Society of North America (RESNA), Annual Conference (Orlando, FL, USA, June 28-July 2, 2000), 276--278.
[9]
Law, C., Jacko, J., and Edwards, P. Programmer-focused website accessibility evaluations in Proceedings of the 7th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on computers and accessibility (Baltimore, MD, USA, 2005), 20--27.
[10]
Law, C. M., Jacko, J. A., Yi, J. S., and Choi, Y. S. Developing new heuristics for evaluating universal design standards and guidelines in Proceedings of the Ergonomics Society Annual Conference (Cambridge, UK, April 4-6, 2006).
[11]
Lawson, B. How Designers Think: The design process demystified 3rd Edition. Architectural Press, Burlington, MA, 2006.
[12]
Mace, R. Universal Design: Housing for the Lifespan of All People. US Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, Washington, DC, USA, 1988.
[13]
Nielsen, J., "Heuristic Evaluation", in Usability inspection methods, Nielsen, J. and Mack, R. L., Eds., Wiley, 1994.
[14]
Preiser, W. and Ostroff, E. Universal Design Handbook 1st Edition. McGraw-Hill Professional, 2001.
[15]
Purho, V. Heuristic Inspections for Documentation - 10 Recommended Documentation Heuristics. Newsletter, Date Accessed: May 25, 2006, http://stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/0004-docsheuristics.html, 2000.
[16]
Royal National Institute of the Blind. Access-Ability: Making technology more useable by people with disabilities. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://www.tiresias.org/guidelines/access-ability/.
[17]
Smith, J. What can legislation do for design? in Proceedings of 11th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (Paris, France, 1991), 1058--1060.
[18]
Stephanidis, C., et al., "Industrial Policy Issues", in User interfaces for all: Concepts, Methods, and Tools, Stephanidis, C., Ed. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., 2001.
[19]
Stephanidis, C. and Salvendy, G. Toward an Information Society for All: An International R&D Agenda. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 10,2 (1998), 107--134.
[20]
The Australian Banker's Association. Industry Standards on Accessibility of Electronic Banking. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://www.bankers.asn.au/, 2003.
[21]
The Center for Universal Design (North Carolina State University). Universal Design Education Online. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://www.udeducation.org/.
[22]
The Helen Hamlyn Research Centre. Inclusive Design Education Resource. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/inclusivedesignresource.
[23]
The National Council on Disability, Design for Inclusion: Creating a New Marketplace, Industry White Paper. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/2004/newmarketplace.htm, 2004, 97--106.
[24]
The National Endowment for the Arts. Resource: Accessibility. Date Accessed: June 2, 2006, http://www.nea.gov/resources/Accessibility/index.html.
[25]
The World Wide Web Consortium. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. Date Accessed: July, 24, 2006, http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/, 1999.

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Methodological Standards in Accessibility Research on Motor Impairments: A SurveyACM Computing Surveys10.1145/354350955:7(1-35)Online publication date: 15-Dec-2022
  • (2020)Universal Design of ICT: A Historical Journey from Specialized Adaptations Towards Designing for DiversityUniversal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Design Approaches and Supporting Technologies10.1007/978-3-030-49282-3_1(3-18)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2020
  • (2017)Assessment of Wearable Virtual Reality Technology for Visiting World Heritage Buildings: An Educational ApproachJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/073563311773399556:6(940-973)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2017
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
Assets '06: Proceedings of the 8th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
October 2006
316 pages
ISBN:1595932909
DOI:10.1145/1168987
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 23 October 2006

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. assistive technology
  2. design resources
  3. heuristic evaluation
  4. universal design

Qualifiers

  • Article

Conference

ASSETS06
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

Upcoming Conference

ASSETS '25

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)36
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 16 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Methodological Standards in Accessibility Research on Motor Impairments: A SurveyACM Computing Surveys10.1145/354350955:7(1-35)Online publication date: 15-Dec-2022
  • (2020)Universal Design of ICT: A Historical Journey from Specialized Adaptations Towards Designing for DiversityUniversal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Design Approaches and Supporting Technologies10.1007/978-3-030-49282-3_1(3-18)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2020
  • (2017)Assessment of Wearable Virtual Reality Technology for Visiting World Heritage Buildings: An Educational ApproachJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/073563311773399556:6(940-973)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2017
  • (2017)The gamification of accessibility design: A proposed framework2017 9th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games)10.1109/VS-GAMES.2017.8056606(233-236)Online publication date: Sep-2017
  • (2015)Designing for designers: Towards the development of accessible ICT products and services using the VERITAS frameworkComputer Standards & Interfaces10.1016/j.csi.2015.05.00442:C(113-124)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2015
  • (2015)Designing Accessible Games with the VERITAS Framework: Lessons Learned from Game DesignersUniversal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Access to Learning, Health and Well-Being10.1007/978-3-319-20684-4_53(547-554)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2015
  • (2014)A universal design resource for rich Internet applications based on design patternsUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-013-0291-613:2(205-226)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2014
  • (2013)The false dichotomy between accessibility and usabilityProceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility10.1145/2461121.2461146(1-2)Online publication date: 13-May-2013
  • (2012)Challenges for users and designers in the design process of a satellite images handling systemCompanion Proceedings of the 11th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.5555/2400076.2400082(13-16)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2012
  • (2012)Helping designers in making choices through gamesProceedings of the 11th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.5555/2393536.2393570(229-238)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2012
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media