For Steve Lewis, board president of the Alliance of People with disAbilities, navigating downtown Seattle is an awful experience. He uses a wheelchair, and Seattle’s steep hills can be a significant barrier to access.
Universal Design (UD) is an approach to design that increases the potential for developing a better quality of life for a wide range of individuals. It is a design process that enables and empowers a diverse population by improving human performance, health and wellness, and social participation (Steinfeld and Maisel, 2012). It creates products, systems, and environments to be as usable as possible by as many people as possible regardless of age, ability or situation.
