It’s difficult to remember pain when you’re not feeling it, and harder still to imagine living with physical limits you don’t actually have. But all it takes is a brief stroll to see how badly designed the city is for those who are very young, old, short, heavy, frail, or in any way impaired.
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.
