“Design for Inclusion: Creating a New Marketplace” Release
National Press Club

Presentation by Joel Kahn

October 28, 2004

I’m Joel Kahn, a Member of the National Council on Disability. Welcome to the release of “Design for Inclusion: Creating a New Marketplace,” presented by the National Council on Disability. Today, we have assembled a panel of consumer, industry, and governmental leaders to discuss the report and describe their efforts to enhance electronic and information access for individuals with disabilities. I’m going to first ask each of the panelists to introduce themselves and tell us why the universal design of electronic and information technology is important to you.

I would now like to present to you NCD’s report addressing the universal design of electronic and information technology, “Design for Inclusion: Creating a New Marketplace.” The National Council decided to undertake this report because the explosive development of information technology is rapidly changing the way we work, shop, communicate, and play. Information technology is now relied upon for routine daily activities that contribute to overall quality of life. For example, as you can see my hands do not work. I use voice recognition technology to perform my duties at work. With this tool, I speak into a microphone and my voice gets converted to text within the application I am using, such as Microsoft Word. This happens to be one of the technologies that was evaluated in this report. Without this software, I would not be able to be a productive employee.

NCD believes that designing with access in mind can significantly increase the size of targeted markets for E&IT. When considered at a global level, almost 500 million people in just the U.S. and the top five emerging markets have permanent disabilities. Every consumer is different. No two people have the same exact set of learning styles, abilities, experiences, or educational background. To remain competitive, companies must learn to develop products that accommodate the wants, needs, and preferences of as many individual consumers as is technically possible and economically feasible.

This study reports on the market for universally designed mainstream products and services, documents successful universal design development processes, attempts to understand consumer needs, documents universal design facilitators and barriers, and identifies and addresses current issues in universal design. Our analysis included the study of six products or product lines: ATMs, cellphones, PDAs, televisions, voice recognition software, and distance learning.

Based on an analysis of data collected during the market analysis, product assessment, industry study, and user study, certain conclusions can be drawn about the state of universal design and the likely trends that will facilitate or inhibit the development of universal design products and services.

1) A sizeable market for universal design products and services exists. However, few companies appreciate the size of the market or know how to tap the potential of the market.

2) Universal design objectives may be achieved by making relatively minor modifications to the product design process currently used by manufacturers. The fact that companies may achieve universal design objectives without changing their core design process is significant.

3) Our review of the state of universal design indicated that products that are designed to be accessible sometimes do not actually meet the needs of the target population. Developers may not fully understand the needs of users with disabilities because people with disabilities are not usually integrated into the design process.

Government, industry, and consumers have important roles to play in promoting universal design. Consumers were asked to comment on what the federal government, manufacturers of products, and consumers themselves could do to promote universal design. Among the recommendations were that the Federal government should use focus groups in standards development, and should include participation from a variety of consumers as well as individuals with technical knowledge; and standards should be developed in conjunction with solutions to make them more realizable.

Industry should get consumers with disabilities involved early in the design process and always consult with the people they’re designing for, whether through direct involvement or market research. Industry needs to consider the wider market that can benefit from products with accessibility features, and recognize the advantage that can be had by building in universal design from the beginning. The consumers we talked to also indicated that we (consumers) can influence the development of universally designed products by participating in research studies, surveys, and product evaluations. Consumers can purchase products that they find most accessible and not purchase products from companies that fail to demonstrate an effort to address universal design.

The Council took these recommendations into consideration, performed our research, and came up with 19 recommendations in our report that include strategies for government and industry to promote universal design; recommendations for strengthening the impact of Section 508; recommendations to promote the inclusion of universal design in industry practices; and recommendations for creating a new marketplace.

NCD believes that consumer demand, advanced technology, and the diversity of the global market creates a powerful business case for designing E&IT that is usable by billions of consumers, with and without disabilities. NCD hopes this study will turn the tide from having to design E&IT that is accessible to people with disabilities to wanting to design E&IT that is accessible by many more consumers. Designing with access in mind can significantly increase the size of the targeted markets for E&IT and good business practice dictates that designers and engineers avoid unintentionally excluding large populations of consumers from accessing and using the E&IT they develop and manufacture.

I will now turn to Benjamin Wu, Deputy Under Secretary for Technology Affairs at the Department of Commerce who is going to comment on the recommendations for government and the work the Department of Commerce is doing with respect to the universal design of electronic and information technology.