[music]
Narrator: Including Universal Design in the Engineering Curriculum
Cynthia: By including accessibility and universal design
in engineering curriculum,
you're making a statement to all the students that you're teaching
that the perspectives and the needs of people with disabilities
is something that they need to think about,
whether they're engineering specifically for that group or for any other group.
Sheryl: I think it's really important that we train our new engineers
to be versed in the area of universal design and accessibility
so that when they create products for the companies that they will work for
they'll be accessible and usable by people with disabilities
and individuals with all kinds of different characteristics.
Anat: As a creator of a technology,
you have the onus and responsibility
to address the needs of a variety of end-users.
Narrator: Universal design and related frameworks
such as inclusive design, ability-based design,
and human-centered design
encourage engineers to be proactive in considering the abilities of diverse users.
Universal design is defined by the Center for Universal Design
at North Carolina State University as
"the design of products and environments to be usable by all
people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for
adaptation or specialized design."
Universal design requires engineers to question
any assumptions a design makes about its users.
Engineering students who understand these concepts
enter the workforce prepared to design for a wide variety of users.
Kat: So just as we teach safety
and material properties and dynamics within our engineering curriculum,
incorporating universal design can ensure that our future engineers
consider those small design tweaks and consider the breadth of the population
in their design and future innovation.
Terrill: Asking “Is this accessible?” or “What are the accessibility implications?”
then that is a practice that can follow them throughout their engineering career.
Narrator: Engineer Billy Price used his own life experience
as a person with quadriplegia to design a line of shoes.
It's an example of universal design.
Billy: I don't have the ability to tie laces
and I know when it comes to laces
a common solution out there is to use Velcro, but even if you overcome the laces,
you still have the physical issue of jamming your foot into the shoe,
so staring at my feet for 18 years, in other words half a lifetime,
of not being able to put my shoes on, I knew there had to be a better solution.
The shoe that we've created, yes it has adaptive characteristics.
But we're not marketing it as an adaptive shoe.
It's a shoe that's trendy.
It's a shoe that everyone's going to want to wear.
It's a shoe that will be in all the stores,
so anyone can buy it.
Narrator: The shoes have a unique zipper
that runs along the outside edge of the shoe.
It opens like a clamshell.
There are opportunities for universal design
in thousands of consumer products and built environments
that engineers help to design and build.
Addressing these needs can improve the lives
of individuals with disabilities and the general population.
Engineering educators can help prepare their students
to design for diverse abilities
by introducing accessibility or universal design topics
in a variety of ways.
Richard: You could do maybe just part of a lecture,
or you could just do one lecture on it,
or several lectures, not a whole course,
and the third option is to just develop a whole course
on accessibility and universal design.
Brianna: In a classroom when you're having a design challenge,
if you think about how could somebody,
could somebody who's older and has arthritis
use this thing you're designing?
Could a pregnant woman use this thing you've just created?
Start asking those questions.
Could somebody who's color-blind use this?
You're actually thinking about a more broad population.
It's an easy way to sneak some ideas about universal design,
creating a product that's more widely usable into what you're designing.
Narrator: University of Washington's Terrill Thompson
created a web design curriculum for high school students
that integrates accessibility into design considerations.
Terrill: Kids are learning to code web pages
using all the languages that you use to code webpages–
HTML, CSS and JavaScript–
and they learn very early on some core design principles,
one of which is the need for accessible design.
And so they learn how people with disabilities
access computers and access the Web
and what some of the challenges they face are,
and then as they're learning new techniques throughout the course
they learn or they're taught to ask,
how does this technique affect accessibility?
Narrator: But there are other ways that faculty can teach about disability,
accessibility, and universal design in their courses.
Cynthia: I think that capstone courses, the purpose of them is to allow students to
apply the skills that they've learned in a real world situation
and so it can be a great opportunity for students,
to first of all understand that accessibility and universal design
can address real world problems.
But also to allow the students to put some of the skills they've learned into practice.
Kat: I teach our senior design course
which is a common year-long course for engineering students
that they take in their final year if they're an undergraduate.
And that really is a natural place for integrating topics of
accessibility and universal design.
We have students working on projects from designing an electric skateboard
to figuring out the next medical product that can prevent collapsed lungs.
And in all of these, components of universal design
can enter to help them do user testing on a diverse set of users,
consider how small changes in their design
can increase access, or make a device easier to use.
Often a design tweak that, for example,
makes it easier for an individual with a visual impairment
or who has limited dexterity
will actually make the product easier for everyone to use.
So we inject universal design into our curriculum
to encourage them to explore lots of different design spaces
and hopefully, ultimately have a better design.
Nils: In my class, I teach a biomechanics class
and we talk about momentum and linear and angular momentum
and I demonstrate how I use momentum to swing my arm to get my hand up
onto the joystick of my wheelchair.
So it's kind of, try to incorporate those type of examples in class.
Cynthia: Giving students opportunities to
meet and interact with people with disabilities
is a great way to include it in the curriculum.
Kat: We've found that the students learned so much
through just having a space to sit down and talk frankly about
issues surrounding accessibility, disability, and some of the societal implications.
Narrator: By teaching accessibility and universal design in engineering courses,
faculty are producing engineers who can succeed in a competitive job market
because they will be equipped to create products that are widely accessible
to users with diverse abilities.
Instructors can get started by...
including a panel of individuals with diverse abilities,
helping students to consider universal design
and address disability-related issues in design projects,
requiring that students adhere to accessibility guidelines
when they create user interfaces or websites.
Terrill: If we want an accessible society with innovation that includes accessibility,
then students need to be taught about universal design and accessibility.
Narrator: To learn more about how you can incorporate accessibility
and universal design in engineering courses, visit the
AccessEngineering website hosted by the University of Washington.
uw.edu/doit/programs/accessengineering
AccessEngineering is supported by National Science Foundation
Grant number EEC-144961. Any opinions, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this video are
those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the National Science Foundation.
Copyright 2016.
Permission is granted to copy these materials for educational
non-commercial purposes provided the source is acknowledged.