There are many reasons, both practical and economic, for creating a world we can all use. Here are a few papers which highlight key reasons:
People who could benefit from more universal designs include many both with and without disabilities. In some cases, people may experience difficulty in using products purely as a result of the environment or an unusual circumstance. Beneficiaries of universal design include:
In order to design for the general population, it is important to understand the diversity, problems, tools, and abilities of its members. To explore these for people with disabilities, we provide a section A Brief Introduction to Disabilities.
A group of universal design advocates are working cooperatively to try to develop a set of universal design principles. The goal is to see whether there are some general high-level principles which apply across environments, products, and communication. This is an ongoing project, and input is solicited.
The Reference & Resource Library is a place where all of the different documents and resources cited throughout the D A A W areas will be brought together in one place for easy perusal and searching. This area will include the full text of any documents which are in the public domain. For those documents which are not available, information for ordering the documents will be provided wherever possible. We may eventually be able to directly link to some publishers to facilitate purchase over the net. Resources available in this area include:
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