Welcome to the the Universal Design E-World: An interactive community for professionals, educators, and students interested in learning and contributing to the advancement of UD.
IDeA Center Kicks-off Its NEA 2009 UD Leadership Award with an Advisory Committee Meeting at Howard University
The IDeA Center received the National Endowment for the Arts 2009 Universal Design Leadership award for an 18-month initiative at the nation’s seven Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) with accredited architectural departments. The project is called Bridging the Gap: Increasing Access to Universal Design. The $65,000 award will be used to improve UD curricula at HBCU, sponsor speaker exchange, develop a state-of-the-art report, and assess the inclusiveness of HBCU communities to increase public awareness of the importance of UD in African American communities, which have the highest disability rates in the country.
On November 21, 2009 the IDeA Center co-hosted the first Advisory Committee meeting of the project with Howard University at their downtown Washington, D.C. campus. Five universities, three national architecture organizations, and the NEA sent representatives to set a course for the 18-month project that includes development of a brand new architectural curriculum emphasizing UD at North Carolina A&T, smaller curriculum development projects at other schools, a national UD student competition through the National Organization of Minority Architects, a Design and Diversity conference through the American Institute of Architects, and a publication and traveling exhibition on UD.
A follow up meeting is planned on the Greensboro campus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technological University in Greensboro on February 26-27, 2010 to help develop the country’s first architectural curriculum centered on universal design. The Greensboro meeting will be summarized in a web-publication featuring guidance for curriculum development and the accomplishments of HBCUs in community service.
For more information contact Susan Hunter (
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) or visit the HBCU website.
Rural Aging in Place Community Action Model
The IDeA Center’s Rural Aging in Place project with Mercy Care for the Adirondacks (MCA), a faith-based service organization headquartered in Lake Placid, New York, has completed a series of community-run assessments, culminating in community-wide surveys of residents in three Adirondack Towns in February. The project, sponsored by the New York State Office for Aging, is developing models to empower rural communities across the state interested in developing programs and services that better serve and reflect the needs of their older residents. Citizen committees formed in each of the three towns included in the grant have established goals and work plans and conducted interviews and focus groups with residents, politicians, and business people. The findings are reflected in the town-wide surveys, findings to be summarized in action plans prepared for town-wide approval in March 2010.
For more information contact Susan Hunter (
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) or visit the Rural Aging in Place website.
IDeA Center Participates in a New Lifelong Communities Initiative
The IDeA Center recently became a partner in the Lifelong Communities Implementation Initiative started by the planning firm Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company. The LCII is a team of planners, architects, health experts, and market analysts who together provide a suite of services to improve the livability of communities and the health of residents. The LCII provides a suite of services to improve the livability of communities and the health of residents. The Lifelong Communities Team studies local market conditions, health and wellness opportunities, lifelong learning, and physical structure and recommends a range of programming, planning, and building strategies that will help to better position a community as a healthful environment for residents of all ages and physical abilities.
Community qualities the LCII supports -- A sound neighborhood structure -- A diversity of housing that is accessible and appropriate -- Convenient places to shop for daily needs -- A vibrant, accessible pedestrian realm -- Intergenerational engagement -- Diverse social gathering spots -- Healthy living -- Wellness programming dispersed throughout neighborhood environments -- Continuous employment and volunteerism -- Support services available as needed -- Continuing care available as needed
Edward Steinfeld to be Honored with Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.
On March 25, 2010, Edward Steinfeld will be awarded the Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence. The award honors a faculty member who has the most distinguished record of teaching, mentorship, research, and public service. Only one faculty member in the University receives this award and Dr. Steinfeld is the second recipient. He will give an address to the university community, followed by an Open House at the IDeA Center. Those interested in attending can contact the IDeA Center to receive an invitation although all recipients of this E-Newsletter will receive one when they become available.
For more information, contact Jordana Maisel at
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Edward Steinfeld cited in The Chronicle of Higher Education
Ed Steinfeld was recently cited in The Chronicle of Higher Education article “Design for Disability Will Become the Norm,” which was released on February 7, 2010. Read the full article.
Recent Conferences, Presentations and Publications
In August 2009, Gary S. Danford, Ph.D. and Michael D. Grimble, MUP presented new research to the American Psychological Association’s 34th Division: Population and Environmental Psychology at the 117th annual APA conference held in Toronto, Canada. Describing a new strategy for conducting case studies of universal design, Danford and Grimble presented the future for evidence-based practice in universal design. They described a new strategy for collecting user-oriented information about environmental designs, as well as, a new measure for the relationship between environmental designs and human activity performance. The data presented at the conference came from a partial data set representing more than 500 participants with varying conditions affecting their physical, sensory and cognitive abilities. The study has since rounded out its data collection. Results of the surveys will be available soon.
Professor Edward Steinfeld gave an invited lecture on the global status of enabling environments at the University of New South Wales, School of the Built Environment this December in Sydney. While in Australia, he also met with the Ministry of Housing and the Commission on Human Rights to share information on developments in universal design and accessible housing in the U.S. and Australia.
Edward Steinfeld and Clive D’Souza presented the latest findings and design resources from the Anthropometry of Wheeled Mobility Program at the quarterly meeting of the U.S. Access Board in Washington, DC on January 12, 2010.
Members of the RERC-APT recently participated in the Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting, January 10-14, 2010 in Washington, DC. • Clive D’Souza, presented the paper Space Requirements for Wheeled Mobility Devices in Public Transportation: Analysis of Clear Floor Space Requirements by D'Souza, Steinfeld, Paquet, and Feathers. • Jordana Maisel presented the poster Systematic Review of Research on Boarding and Disembarking by Maisel, Lenker and Damle. • Aaron Steinfeld presented the poster Modality Preference for Rider Reports on Transit Accessibility Problems by Steinfeld, Aziz, Von Dehsen, Park, Maisel and Steinfeld.
Edward Steinfeld was a presenter at a workshop on Innovations in Transport for All, organized by the International Transport Forum at The World Bank Headquarters in Washington, DC on January 14, 2010. The program focused on improving accessibility to transportation in developing countries. Leading experts from around the world shared ideas for improving accessibility in developing countries. The highlights from the workshop will feed into the 2010 International Transport Forum on Transport and Innovation: Unleashing the Potential to be held 26-28 May in Leipzig, Germany.
Upcoming Conferences
QLT 2010
The Second International Symposium on Quality of Life Technology will be held June 28 - 29, 2010, at Red Rock Spa, Las Vegas, NV. Visit the symposium website for complete details. This year’s symposium is a joint event with the RESNA 2010 Conference. Paper and Poster Submissions are due March 15, 2010 Exhibition and Demo applications are due by April 10, 2010 Selected papers will be included in a special issue of the IOS Journal on Technology and Disability
TRANSED 2010
The 12th International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled Persons (TRANSED) will be held in Hong Kong, the Pearl of Orient, in 2010. For more information go to http://www.transed2010.hk
ICADI 2010
The International Conference on Ageing, Disability and Independence (ICADI) will take place September 7-10, 2010 in Newcastle, UK and will focus on approaches to support people as they age in maintaining independence in daily living at home, at work and in the community. For more information go here.
Include 2011
The Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre announces the sixth International conference on Inclusive Design; Include 2011 will take place at the Royal College of Art, London, UK on 18 – 20 April 2011.
The theme of Include 2011 will be: Social Innovation, its organization, origins and outputs – and the role of inclusive design within it.
Include 2011 international conference at the Royal College of Art is currently seeking papers on all aspects of social innovation, in particular: • Organization – what tools, techniques, frameworks and networks support and enhance social innovation? • Origins – how has social innovation emerged as a design construct and in what ways does it manifest itself? • Outputs – research studies and design exemplars of social innovation, drawn from public space, health, transport and other key domains. Include 2011 is particularly interested in papers that explore the relationship between social innovation and inclusive design.
Abstracts are now being accepted for the Festival of International Conferences on Caregiving, Disability, Aging and Technology (FICCDAT). FICCDAT 2011 will bring together six important and different conferences all focused on enhancing the lives of seniors, persons with disabilities and their family caregivers.
Six concurrent conferences for the price of one!
Growing Older With A Disability
RESNA/ICTA
Advances in Neurorehabilitation
Caregiving in the 21st Century
34th Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Conference
International Conference on Best Practices in Universal Design
Between June 5-8, 2011 rehabilitation, social and health services providers, government policy makers, researchers, family caregivers, students, seniors and persons with disabilities from around the world will gather in Toronto, Canada to explore issues facing aging populations, the implications for healthcare systems and service providers, the roles and responsibilities of family caregivers and policy and how new research findings and technologies are leading new and practical solutions.
The International Conference on Best Practices in Universal Design will be Co-Chaired by Ed Steinfeld, Director of the IDeA Center and Co-Director of the RERC on Universal Design and the Built Environment and the RERC on Accessible Public Transportation, Peter Blanck, University Professor at Syracuse University, which is the highest faculty rank granted to only eight prior individuals in the history of the University and Chairman of the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) at Syracuse University, and Aaron Steinfeld, Systems Scientist in the Robotics Institute (RI) at Carnegie Mellon University and Co-Director of the RERC on Accessible Public Transportation.
The format of this specific conference was conceptualized to achieve three fundamental goals: 1) to cover several domains (i.e. housing, public environments, research methods, and dissemination/education), 2) to target critical issues/questions within those domains, and 3) to host an all-day State of the Science Conference for the RERC on Accessible Public Transportation. Click here for more information about FICCDAT or the International Conference on Best Practices in Universal Design.
Upcoming Publications
The IDeA Center is happy to announce that two new publications will be available in 2010.
Inclusive Housing: A Pattern Book (W.W. Norton & Co.) will be released in April 2010 and is a resource for designing communities to accommodate social diversity and provide equitable opportunities for all residents, or, inclusive design. It focuses on design of housing to provide accessibility to people with disabilities and, at the same time, provide benefits to all residents. The book emerged out of a lengthy discussion within the Congress of New Urbanism about accessible housing design in the urban context. This discussion identified the need for information that would help incorporate accessibility for people with disabilities into neighborhood and housing design practices without compromising other important design goals.
You can view its listings and/or preorder it now at the websites listed below:
A brief complimentary booklet that provides a summary of the forthcoming book is now available on our website. Focusing on visitability, the book excerpts and an annotated version of the new ANSI Type C visitability standards, gives you a better understanding of what visitability is and why it is important to housing design.
The State of the Science: Emerging Research and Developments in Universal Design (Bentham Sciences Publishers Ltd.) will contain the latest research related to universal design that was presented at the RERC-UD’s State of the Science events throughout the past year. The publication will also emphasize the growing need for evidence based practice in the field. It will also identify and prioritize future research needs.
Available Spring 2010:
Stay tuned for brief “Design Resources” articles that will be available for free on our website. This series of short articles will serve as a quick reference tool for researchers, designers and some end users. It will provide evidence based guidelines, identify research gaps and highlight key source material on a variety of topics.
Available in 2011:
A Tool for Rapid Assessment of Product Usability and Universal Design: Development and Preliminary Psychometric Testing. WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment, & Rehabilitation special issue on Ergonomic Product Design by James A. Lenker, PhD, OTR/L, Mahiyar Nasarwanji, MS,Victor Paquet, ScD, AEP, and David Feathers, PhD, AEP.
RESEARCH UPDATES: RERC-UD
Usability Testing of Household Products
The RERC-UD’s R2 team has begun a 1-year study that will evaluate the usability of 18 household products for four user groups: wheelchair users, persons with vision impairment, older adults, and healthy young adults.
These products were identified in a series of seven focus groups that the R2 team conducted in 2007-2008. During those focus groups, consumers from each of the four target groups discussed household products that were problematic for them to use.
In the current study, the 18 product types include those found in three household environments: the kitchen (e.g., microwave oven, storage cabinet), bathroom (e.g., mouthwash bottle, medication bottle), and home office (e.g., 3-hole punch, computer mouse). Within each product type, participants are being asked to evaluate two products having disparate design features.
For R2 researchers, the principal aim of this project is to establish the discriminant validity of the Rapid Assessment of Product Usability and Universal Design (RAPUUD). The RAPUUD is a 13-item tool based on the Principles of UD. The team began developing the RAPUUD in 2007 as part of its long-term goal to encourage product developers to integrate inclusive design principles into their product designs.
Project Team Members: Faculty Investigators: James Lenker, PhD, OTR/L & Victor Paquet, ScD Graduate Students: Mahiyar Naswarwanji, Tim Dionne, and Angela Chau
RESEARCH UPDATES: RERC-APT
Data Collection Underway in CMU Lab on Modality Preference for Rider Reports on Transit Accessibility Problems
A full-scale simulated space was built at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to study rider documentation of bus shelter accessibility barriers. The first round of publications from this team was presented at a poster session at this year's Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting in January.
Construction of New Full-Scale Bus Simulation Complete—Research Underway
A full scale model of a simulated bus and platform were recently constructed at the IDeA Center at The University at Buffalo. The apparatus will allow us to test the impact of various ramp slopes and lifts on the usability of transit systems.
Photos of the full-scale bus simulation in the lab at the IDeA Center.
RERC-APT Partners with Easter Seals Project ACTION
The RERC-APT recently developed a collaborative relationship with Easter Seals Project ACTION. Easter Seals Project ACTION promotes cooperation between the transportation industry and the disability community to increase mobility for people with disabilities under the ADA and beyond. Recognizing our common goals, we worked together to develop, “Universal Design & Accessible Transit Systems: Facts to Consider When Updating or Expanding Your Transit System.” The guide is targeted towards those involved with transportation infrastructure and capital investment purchases of equipment. It provides useful information on accessibility and the benefits of universal design, and contains recommendations and guidelines for transit agencies to consider when updating or expanding their systems. It is available online and as a print publication.
Since fall 2009, over 10000 fact sheets were mailed out and over 1000 copies were distributed at various conferences.
In addition, Mary Leary, Senior Director of Project ACTION & Transportation Initiatives, joined the RERC-APT Advisory Board.
Universal Design Newsletter Please follow the link below to the latest issue of Universal Design Newsletter, published by Universal Designers and Consultants.
Please follow the link below to the latest issue of Universal Design Newsletter, published by Universal Designers and Consultants.
The Second International Symposium on Quality of Life Technology will be held June 28 - 29, 2010, at Red Rock Spa, Las Vegas, NV. 
The 12th International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled Persons (TRANSED) will be held in Hong Kong, the Pearl of Orient, in 2010.
