How might we develop products made with and by disabled users rather than for them? Could we change living and working spaces to make them accessible rather than designing products that "fix" disabilities? How can we grow our capabilities to make designs more “bespoke” to each individual? After Universal Design brings together scholars, practitioners, and disabled users and makers to consider these questions and to argue for the necessity of a new user-centered design. As many YouTube videos demonstrate, disabled designers are not only fulfilling the grand promises of DIY design but are also questioning what constitutes meaningful design itself. By forcing a rethink of the top-down professionalized practice of Universal Design, which has dominated thinking and practice around design for disability for decades, this book models what inclusive design and social justice can look like as activism, academic research, and everyday life practices today. With chapters, case studies, and interviews exploring questions of design and personal agency, hardware and spaces, the experiences of prosthetics' users, conventional hearing aid devices designed to suit personal style, and ways of facilitating pain self-reporting, these essays expand our understanding of what counts as design by offering alternative narratives about creativity and making. Using critical perspectives on disability, race, and gender, this book allow us to understand how design often works in the real world and challenges us to rethink ideas of "inclusion" in design.

Timely and useful resource that guides educators in using UDL in their classrooms while helping students transition to adult life.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) stands at the forefront of contemporary efforts to create universal access to educational curricula for all students, including those with disabilities. The "universal" in UDL does not mean there is a single optimal solution for everyone. Instead, it underscores the need for flexible approaches to teaching and learning that meet the needs of different kinds of learners. In this first UDL Reader, Anne Meyer and David H. Rose, cofounders of CAST, the educational nonprofit that developed the UDL framework, bring together a collection of articles on the practical, classroom dimensions of the UDL revolution in education. The authors offer insights on learner differences, the capacities of new media in the classroom, and effective teaching and assessment practices. The volume also includes lessons from teacher professional development workshops, classroom-based research, and UDL practitioners themselves. A highly readable volume aimed particularly at school teachers and administrators, this book is also an uncommonly accessible introduction to UDL for all readers committed to creating improved and universal access to educational materials for all students.

Universal Design is written primarily for architects and interior designers and offers a sensible approach to the accomodation demands of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Its focus is achieving ADA compliance through the use of "universal design", which is presented as a viable alternative to traditional design. Universal Design offers a concise overview of the ADA, placing it in historical context, and then defines the concept of universal design through discussions of theory and practice. Loaded with case studies, this book reveals how universal design can be utilized in a wide variety of situations and settings, from office spaces to public meeting halls to the individual home. A valuable addition to any design bookshelf, Universal Design brings creative solutions to the challenging demands of the ADA.