Wheelblades
Manual wheelchair drivers often experience reduced mobility in winter snow and slush; Wheelblades address this problem. Wheelblades are small skiis that attach to the front wheels of a manual wheelchair. Their wide contact surface distributes the wheelchair driver’s pressure evenly over the ground, preventing the small front wheels from sinking into the snow. Wheelblades are […]
Building Homes with Accessibility in Mind
In 2015, the U.S. celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, more than 56 million Americans have some sort of disability. That’s more than 18% of the population, which makes those with disabilities the largest minority group in our country. Today, this home builder […]
Technical Services
Looking for experts in Universal Design and Accessible Design consulting? In the next few months, we’ll be generating a community of experts in UD. If you’re a professional offering technical services in UD and Accessible Design, please contact us to find out how you can get listed on this site. Center for Inclusive Design and […]
Careers at NAHB
As one of the most influential trade associations in the Washington, D.C. area, NAHB is an exciting and rewarding place to work. Our people help serve, promote and support the home building industry through aggressive legislative action, policy development, legal services, economic forecasting and analysis, education and more.
Pneumatic tech could bring affordable full-page braille tablets to reality
Suppose you had a tablet that only displayed one line of text at a time. It would be pretty frustrating, but it’s a limitation that blind users of braille-displaying devices are faced with constantly. Thanks to new technology being developed at the University of Michigan, however, full-page refreshable braille tablets could soon be on their […]
At Home with Autism: Designing Housing for the Spectrum
The University of Bristol, the Chicago University Press, has published a landmark book on designing homes for people on the Autism Spectrum, At Home with Autism. The authors, Kim Steele and Sherry Ahrentzen, have been exploring this issue with rare sensitivity and thoroughness for some years. This 320 page book is a tour-de-force with a thoroughgoing […]
New Food Scented Fragrance May Remind People with Dementia to Eat
The sense of smell is closely tied to memory, a fact that designers made use of when they developed Ode, a fragrance disperser designed to help people with dementia remember to eat. People with dementia often begin to eat less and suffer from weight loss, which can trigger other health problems. The high quality food […]
The inequality of sidewalks
Pedestrian deaths are much more common in poor neighborhoods in urban America than in wealthier ones, a disparity Governing magazine covered in depth back in 2014. That result stems from a brutal collision of bad infrastructure and limited choices: The poor and minorities are more likely to get around by foot, but they also often live in places where doing […]
Fleksy
The Flesky app for the iPhone makes typing easier by removing the need to hit each letter with precision. Unlike other auto-correct systems, Fleksy analyzes a wealth of data about a user’s typing and can detect the correct word to input even when someone misses every single key. In fact, the system is powerful enough […]
The Baobab: A Storybook App for Children who are Deaf
The Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) at Gallaudet University has released the first of a series of three bilingual storybook apps that will simultaneously help children learn American Sign Language (ASL) and English. The app includes an original story told in both ASL and English, colorful illustrations, easy & […]