Universal Design Standards Blog

The design has taken on a new role than in the past.  Designers have to take into account many different things when they are designing anything from an entrance to a building or a graphic for a webpage.  Today it is important that all people can access the things that are designed. Universal Design Standards help to create this for designers to follow. 

Law, Ji, and Young talked about the issue in their paper focusing on the problem of not clearly defining what users need in technology design (2007).  There and many different disabilities and a designer does not have a ready-made list of things that are needed in a design to fulfill all needs. This is something that is evolving as the design continues to develop.  Alt tags are something that has been pushed in the past few years to make screen readers able to help users with visual impairments still be able to navigate websites. These guidelines will continue to evolve as what is needed will be better defined.

Universal Design is important to make sure that everyone has access to websites.  This is very important in the days of online education. The knowledge needs to be accessible to everyone that wants to use it to learn.  Education needs to be available to everyone that wants to have that education. The biggest penalty for not designing for all users is the alienation of entire groups of people because of a design.  This can be as small as just losing that group or as large as losing large numbers of users because of that mistake. Law, Jaeger, and McKay talk about Universal Design Standards in User-Centered Design in a paper they authored (2010).  If the design is focused on certain users, the design standards for that group will be met but often lacks meeting standards for other groups. When following User Centered Design, the designer must also add in the factors and design for other groups as well.



Universal Design Standards are being defined.  They are helping bring design to all users so they can make sure to have an effective use of all things.