What is Universal Design?
An Excerpt Reprinted with permission from the publisher, Adaptive Environments Center ©.
Polly Welch, Associate Professor
University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA
This document is the first chapter in the book, Strategies
for Teaching Universal Design, Welch, P.
Editor, (Adaptive Environments Center and MIG Communications, 1995) .
It discusses what
Universal design is and is not and why the term was needed at all.
What is universal design? It is, simply, "an approach to creating
environments and products that are usable by all people to the greatest
extent possible." (1) The ambiguity of the term universal design,
according to James Mueller, is its virtue because it provokes discussion.
The implication that universal design applies to everyone is another virtue
of the term. As Elizabeth Church points out, "universal design implies
that 'it' could happen to me" as opposed to "special needs"
that are always someone else's. (2) Ralph Caplan adds that "in a
rational world you wouldn't have to use it, because that's what design
itself would be." (3)
Although a recently coined term, the concept of universal design is not
new. Architect Michael Bednar in 1977 noted that the functional capability
of all people is usually enhanced when environmental barriers are removed
and suggested that a new concept is needed that is "much broader
and more universal" and "involves the environmental needs of
all users." (4) The term accessible design was used in the early
1980s to describe the value of universal design—design for all people.
(5) Over time, however, accessible and accessibility have become synonymous
with making environments usable primarily by people with disabilities,
losing the more inclusive connotation of making environments understandable
to and usable by all people. An accessible building implies that a person
using a wheelchair can get into the building, but the notion that the
building is convenient to public transportation, has an easily located
front door, and provides good directories for wayfinding is usually not
part of the image of accessibility that comes to mind for designers. Those
features, however, are the essence of a universal design approach.
Universal design is not a euphemism for accessibility. It is not a catchy
phrase to make more palatable the requirements of the ADA Standards for
Accessible Design. It is a term that re-establishes an important goal
of good design—that it shall meet the needs of as many users as possible.
Universal indicates a unanimity of practice and applicability to all cases
without significant exception. (6) Universal design suggests solutions
that are capable of being adjusted or modified to meet varied requirements.
It is the inclusivity of universal design that makes it cost effective;
universal design increases the number of people whose needs are being
addressed and it encourages an integrative approach rather than multiple
separate solutions.
The need for the concept of universal design emerged through two separate
but related movements: the struggle by the disability community to erase
the "we—they" dichotomy that allowed designers to marginalize
the needs of people with disabilities and the pressure from groups within
the design professions for democratization of values through a more pluralistic
definition of good design.
Early advocacy and legal efforts by the disability community in the sixties
and seventies to make existing public places physically accessible to
people with disabilities resulted in the development of numerous architectural
features to promote "handicap accessibility"--the ramp, the
lift, the larger toilet stall, and the international symbol with its wheelchair
user. These devices have provided much needed access and provided potent
symbols of separateness as well. Lusher and Mace point out that the hard-won
laws to increase educational, employment, housing, and recreational opportunities
for people with disabilities "were inadequate as educational media
and they reinforced the outdated, narrow view of human environmental needs
by requiring a few special features for what was perceived as a few people."
(7)
The term universal design was invented in response to a conceptual dilemma
that has plagued advocates of barrier-free environments since the passage
of the first ANSI standards. How do you overcome pervasive attitudinal
barriers when physical barriers can be neatly addressed with a few code-compliance
measures? The circular dilemma confounded the disability community's effort
to win broad access. The codes, balancing cost and change, established
minimum standards, which provided the most basic access, but did little
to encourage designers and building owners to consider the benefits of
making buildings more accessible to a broad array of users. Some building
owners even wondered why they should make their buildings accessible if
people with disabilities never used their buildings, overlooking the paradoxical
nature of their question.
The second movement, with roots in the same de cades, is the loose association
of designers and scientists interested in how the built environment meets
the needs of its users. Early efforts focused on the functional fit of
environments and products to people, resulting in anthropocentric and
human-factors research. Unfortunately, much of the data that reached designers
was based on the average, young, able-bodied male. Other groups pressed
for users to have a greater voice in the design of buildings and open
space through greater participation in decision-making and through better
representation of the diversity of users. (8) Designers and researchers
who subscribe to these values have sometimes inadvertently perpetuated
the segregation of users by giving specific constituencies, like the elderly,
special attention. The study of "special populations" has generated
important information for designers on how the environment can meet specific
needs, but special has become another word for separate. (9)
The inherent limitations of design standards, in general, have produced
yet another reason for the concept of universal design. Designers, manufacturers,
and building officials have pressed for clear, simple specification of
solutions for achieving accessibility. People with disabilities found
that the reduction of complex variables to single solutions excluded many
whose disabilities fell outside the norm. Although extensive empirical
research (10) has examined more closely the specifics of how a representative
range of people with disabilities access and interact with the environment,
an alternative to the prevailing paradigms of minimum standard and exceptions
to the norm has not emerged. Designers have historically tended to interpret
minimum standards as maximums, particularly when solutions beyond the
minimum might result in higher costs. The codes have also reinforced the
notion that design for people with disabilities can be achieved by modification
to the norm. Not only does this result in design that segregates, it is
also a costly solution. (11)
The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 heralded the
opportunity for a paradigm shift. Extending the design discussion beyond
the realm of building codes and into the realm of civil rights took the
design and building industries by surprise. By framing the issue of access
as part of the American promise for equal opportunity, the focus was shifted
from the purely pragmatic decision of where to place the wheelchair lift
to who uses the built environment and how to provide them with greater
opportunities to access places and programs. The broadened perspective
created a sense of uncertainty for design decision-makers. Reassurance
came in the form of standards that had some resemblance to the earlier
code requirements but the new requirements also provided an opportunity
for greater creativity and a challenge for designers to think beyond the
minimum requirements by introducing the concept of equivalent facilitation.
To achieve an appropriate equivalent design solution through alternate
means requires that designers and building owners must understand the
needs of users well enough to make informed judgments and to effectively
use the input of users with disabilities.
The positive outcome of the Americans with Disabilities Act is increased
consciousness among designers, building owners, and manufacturers about
the rights of people with a range of disabilities and more accessible
public and private places. The new level of consciousness establishes
a teachable moment. By heightening the awareness of designers to a previously
marginalized group of users, inclusive design values are more likely to
be included in design discourse. The disappointment to some veterans of
barrier-free design efforts is the recodification of user needs. People
are disabled by situations and attitudes: a designer can meet the letter
of the law, follow the details of the standards, and still not create
an enabling environment. The possibilities for replacing standards with
another paradigm for responsible design may lie in the elaboration of
universal design values.
Universal design is also lifespan design. All of us benefit from accessible
places and products at many stages in the passage from childhood to old
age. The case for universal design is frequently made by citing national
census data and projections. In 1990, 48.9 million Americans had some
type of disability and 31 million, one in every eight Americans, were
65 or older; by 2030 it is predicted that one in five Americans will be
over 65. While statistics by themselves can be informative, Lusher and
Mace contend that arguing the numbers game misses the point. Leon Pastalan
concurs, pointing out that by focusing instead on the "context of
normal expectations of the human condition, trying to justify the importance
of each vulnerable population group becomes unnecessary." (12) Michel
Philibert, French philosopher and gerontologist, has proposed that we
are at the dawn of a new understanding where aging is defined as a pattern
of change throughout the entire lifespan. (13) So designing for children,
older people and people with disabilities is not thinking about separate
groups of users but a spectrum of human-environment interaction.
Notes
1. Mace, R., G. Hardie, and J. Plaice (1991). "Accessible Environments:
Toward Universal Design." In Design Interventions: Toward A More
Humane Architecture, edited by Preiser, Vischer, and White, Pp.156. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
2. Mueller's and Church's comments were made at the UDEP Conference,
Boston, November 1994.
3. Caplan, Ralph. "Disabled By Design." Interior Design, August
1992.
4. Bednar, Michael (1977). Barrier Free Environments. Stroudsburg, Pa.:
Dowden, Hutchinson, and Ross.
5. Ostroff, Elaine and Daniel Iacofano (1982). Teaching Design For All
People: The State of the Art. Boston: Adaptive Environments Center.
6. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1981).
7. Lusher, Ruth Hall and Ronald Mace (1989). "Design for Physical
and Mental Disabilities." In Encyclopedia of Architecture: Design
Engineering and Construction, edited by Wilkes and Packard, Pp.755. New
York: John Wiley and Sons.
8. Environmental Design Research Association.
9. Kailes, June Isaacson (1984). Language is More Than a Trivial Concern.
10. Steinfeld et al. (1979). Two-year project at Syracuse University,
the findings and conclusions of which formed the basis for the revisions
to ANSI A117.1 described in "Developing Standards for Accessibility"
in Ref. 4.
11. Ref. 7, Pp.754.
12. Mace, Ronald (1988). Universal Design: Housing for the Lifespan of
All People. Washington, D4C.: U4S4 Department of Housing and Urban Development,
P.4.
13. Byerts, Thomas (1977). "Prologue." Journal of Architectural Education Pp.31, no. 1.
