Are "universal design resources" designed for designers?

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.