At CHALLENGES we hope to build a section titled Access for All, with regular articles on Universal Design in services, facilities and products.

Dr Scott Rains, a well-known Accessibility for Disability advocate has written a post on his blog that aptly defines the current global trend on Universal Design and its synergistic partnership with Green Design.

Universal Design Meets Green Design = Good Design

In 2004, at Designing for the 21st Century III, a group of Latin American visionaries crafted the document known as the “Rio Charter” or the “Rio Charter on Universal Design for Sustainable and Inclusive Development.” They built upon a foundation laid by conference sponsors Adaptive Environments who clearly link Green and Universal Design:

Universal Design is also called Inclusive Design, Design-for-All and Lifespan Design. It is not a design style but an orientation to any design process that starts with a responsibility to the experience of the user. It has a parallel in the green design movement that also offers a framework for design problem solving based on the core value of environmental responsibility. Universal Design and green design are comfortably two sides of the same coin but at different evolutionary stages. Green design focuses on environmental sustainability, Universal Design on social sustainability.
LEED building certification awards points for Universal Design as sustainable green practice and the tourism industry accelerates the convergence between Universal Design and green building with the Davos Declaration. While MIT’s House Research Consortium was preparing homes through their Open Prototype Initiative, Access Living in Chicago was applying good design with readily available materials to its offices as described below.
Posted by rollingrains at October 22, 2007 06:12 PM at http://www.rollingrains.com/
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