Adopting new standards for inclusive design is a must, says Julia Cassim

Part Three of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) came into effect on October 1 – an important milestone for disabled and older people and a crucial bargaining tool for those involved in the area of inclusive design.
All share the vision of a world where no one is excluded or marginalised by the failure of design to meet the aspirations – physical, cognitive and psychological – of large swathes of the population who are currently excluded by it.

But beyond the social or moral case for inclusive design are two other compelling rationales that are not yet sufficiently understood. One need only look at the compelling case for its adoption as a business strategy to see that it is not just a woolly well-intended ideal but a reality that the corporate world ignores at its peril.
It rests overwhelmingly on the stark economic and demographic realities of the world present and future.

Young people are traditionally seen as the core market for goods and services despite the depressing picture painted by demographics, which shows a greying consumer landscape where they are fast becoming a minority. It is their parents and grandparents who are the majority with money to burn, a fact that manufacturers worldwide have been slow to acknowledge with only five per cent of marketing focus targeted their way.

By 2020 half of the UK population will be 50 or over, along with over 130 million people in the pre-enlargement EU. Add to this the numbers of disabled people covered by the DDA and their own purchasing power which the Employers Forum on Disability estimates at between £40-50 billion. Suddenly this new majority is a very attractive prospect indeed.

It is one that is quite different to the stereotypical image held by marketeers. At the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre, a centre for inclusive design at the Royal College of Art, we call those aged over 45 “yo-yos” because they are both young and old simultaneously and are exemplified by Mick Jagger and Madonna who clock in at 61 and 45 respectively. Yo-yos tend to be product literate, technology literate and very picky.

They aspire to the same mainstream products as their children but unlike them require a level of inbuilt functionality that takes into consideration the physical and sensory changes that are taking place in their bodies – their failing eyesight and hearing and their creaky joints which no amount of exercise, cosmetic improvement or determination can deny.

What they want are products that enhance and enable their diverse lifestyles but which do not stigmatise them in stylistic terms. It is a vision shared by disabled people too, those most affected by failure of design to meet these aspirations. It is here that inclusive design has such a key role to play.

We put this case to the designers that we work with at all levels of the profession. We also emphasise another motivation, which we call the creative case – namely the huge benefits that accrue from partnerships with people that designers would not normally consider.

Leading the pack are people with disabilities who do everyday things in radically different ways. Like designers they are lateral thinkers and problem solvers par excellence. We have found that when these two groups of “out of the box” thinkers combine talents, magic can happen as it does every year in the DBA Design Challenge, an annual inclusive design competition which we organise with the Design Business Association. For the past five years teams from the UK’s leading design firms have worked with young disabled people to develop new inclusive products and services for the mainstream market such as Factory design’s saucepan developed with users with severe arthritis, or the “smart” clothing tag system developed by Coley Porter Bell that allows visually impaired consumers to shop independently.

By highlighting such examples of good practice, government can actively promote the cause of inclusive design. In this way it will change the widespread mentality of reluctant or grudging compliance with DDA regulations to one where the innovative possibilities of inclusive design are made evident and its relevance to other groups in the population is revealed so that inclusive design is no longer seen as being of benefit to a minority alone.

The government’s other role is to ensure that a “design by guidelines” culture does not take root. By this we mean one where guidelines are seen as a substitute for user involvement throughout the process and not at a point where adjustments or interventions are expensive, inappropriate or just plain ugly. Or indeed where new design orthodoxies are created which actively hamper the search for innovative solutions.

Government will always have the unique power of the leading consciousness raiser. But it must be done not in the spirit of worthy or finger-wagging officialdom in defence of what is seen as a minority but in the spirit of inclusivity in which all are involved and from which all can benefit.

Its greatest contribution will be to enact legislation of the kind that will engender change – the built environment in the UK is a very different place post-DDA and as a result of the strings attached to National Lottery funding. Both have ensured that grant recipients’ structures are accessible, which in turn has had a knock-on effect on awareness in the architectural profession with new standards of excellence being set for imaginative and sensitive solutions.

This could also be the case in the area of product design. The UK is renowned for the excellence of its designers but their initiatives can be toothless unless backed by standards such as the proposed British Standard 7000 Part Six which covers the design of “mainstream products and/or services that are accessible to, and usable by, as many people as reasonably possible on a global basis, in a wide variety of situations and to the greatest extent possible without the need for special adaptation or specialised design”.

Legislation such as this pushes, while demographics and economic realities pull. New markets are created as a result of increased understanding of what consumers at all levels of the population really want and will buy, as opposed to what marketing departments think might be the case. It is a win-win situation for all concerned, not least the government.

Julia Cassim is a research fellow with the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre at the Royal College of Art

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