Produced monthly by the Adaptive Environments Center, Boston, MA, USA under a contract with the Center for Universal Design, School of Design, North Carolina State University, NC, USA.

Volume I, Number 1  -   January 1999

Contents:

• News of the next Designing for the 21^st Century, An International Conference on Universal Design
• An invitation to plan the 5^th Educator’s Forum that will be held in conjunction with the conference
• Global e-mail list
• News from the Global Network
  • Spain
  • The Netherlands
  • Japan
  • United Kingdom
• Notes from the Fourth Universal Design Education Project Forum
• Adding your information, questions to the Online News

NEXT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON UNIVERSAL DESIGN:

The overall dates are: June 14-18, 2000 in Providence, Rhode Island. Conference sponsors are Adaptive Environments, Center for Universal Design and the Universal Design News.

Boston was the first choice on the evaluations but we found that the hotel prices are the highest in the USA. We then "discovered" Providence, one hour from Boston with good prices, good access and extraordinary cooperation and excitement about the conference. It also gives the coordinator, Adaptive Environments, a chance to do the organizing closer to home, refine the whole process prior to sending it internationally for the next conference in 2002.

Providence is a great very people-friendly city, with a new river walk. We’ll have more details in the Call for Proposals about this unique ocean state location and the many nearby tourist opportunities, hotels and other key information. This will be on the conference website, http:www.adaptenv.org/21century/ by mid February, 1999.

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We welcome much more international leadership/ involvement. There are many decisions to be made, including the date and structure of the meeting. Should it be on Weds June 14, during the pre-conference sessions? Should it be on Sunday June 18, following the general conference? Should it be a whole day? Half day? What should the purpose be? How should we best use our time? Should it also be a networking group that meets throughout the conference, in times outside of the regular sessions?

Please send your comments to Elaine Ostroff for distribution to the entire group. Any volunteers who want to do the planning?

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GLOBAL INTERACTIVE E-MAIL, LIST SERVE:

We can establish this whole list as an open, interactive listserv in which each of you can initiate questions, comments to each other. We need your permission to include your names on this. Please RSVP by February 1, 1999. NOTE: the interactive list will be in addition to the monthly news mentioned above.

We can register everyone who now receives this message, once you confirm that you want to be on the list. After February 1, people will have to subscribe themselves. We can make an easy subscription/sign-up on the website so that OTHER interested people can join. For those of you who may not be familiar with Listservs, this is a group e-mail in which any one who is subscribed can send a message to the entire list. Some people don’t like joining a list as sometimes there is too much mail, or confusion on how it works.

We will begin with an open Listserv and if it becomes burdensome we can change it to a "Moderated" list. This means that all messages must go to the moderator who posts them. This avoids abuse of the list, but also limits the freedom. Does anyone care to offer an opinion on this?

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GLOBAL NETWORK NEWS:

From Spain:

• Expo Forum, "The City for All" L’Hospitalet ’98 was held on July 1-4, in Barcelona. A total of 398 people from 15 European countries participated in the event that was organized by CRID and La Farga L’Hospitalet and a consortium of 14 other national groups. In addition to the presentation of 60 experiences, there were 14 "Debates", discussion groups organized around issues of concern to both smaller and larger cities.

  Also, the Design for All Information Exchange Europe (DAIEE) held working group meetings that reported their conclusions. The working groups included: A. The European Concept of Accessibility; B. An Accessibility Decalogue for the European Cities? C. Design For All in the Future; D. DAIEE Web Site; E. Cooperation Among Advice Centers of Design for All.

  The main conclusion from the Expo Forum noted that all social factors must be involved in order to have a city that could be enjoyed by all the citizens.

  CRID is the Spanish affiliate of the European Institute for Design and Disability (EIDD). For more information, contact Francesc Aragall, President of EIDD and Managing Director of CRID at crid@mail.cinet.es. Watch the monthly Global Design Education News for an announcement about the Design For All Information Exchange Europe website.

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From The Netherlands:

• The Netherlands Design Institute, a partner of the Design for Ageing Network (DAN), has created a new website called Obstacle. You can reach it through the Homepage of the DAN website at http://dan.interact.nl/.

  The Obstacle website grew out of the conference, Unlimited By Design held at the Technical University of Delft in November 1998. The conference centered around its workshops: Products for Public Space, Public Buildings and Signage and the Public Interior. The website is a action oriented way to follow-up the conference.

  The conference and the new website are initiatives of the Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands Design Institute and the Platform for Design for All Netherlands. The web site, which is still under development, is interactive, "Everyone is invited to contribute a 'barrier', an experience, an opinion, a reaction. Your contributions make the Obstacle Course grow…" Obstacles are discussed in the following categories: Fighting with Packaging; Communication with Machines; The Ground; Getting New Designs to Market: Students; Seating; Transportation; Mentalities; Impossible Entrances and Exits; Public Toilets. For more information, contact Anne Voshol at obstacle@design-inst.nl.

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From Japan:

• Several universal design events were recently held in Japan. They were: the International Workshop and Symposium that was held in Yokohama and the Universal Design Symposium in Tokyo.

• The International Workshop on Universal Design was held in Yokohama, November 30 - December 4, 1998 and dedicated to Ron Mace. Organized by the Building Research Institute, Ministry of Construction and the Japan International Science and Technology Exchange, the workshop involved more than 50 participants, 25 of whom contributed papers which were published in draft proceedings.

Dr. Satoshi Kose coordinated the session that featured invited presentations by Roger Coleman, Coordinator of the DAN and Director of DesignAge at the Royal College of Art, London; Robert Fern, Department of Canadian Heritage, Canada; Yoshi Kawauchi, Access Project, Japan; Lorna Middendorf, Alloran, Inc. Michigan; Elaine Ostroff, Adaptive Environments Center, Boston, MA.; and Leslie Young and Larry Trachtman of the Center for Universal Design, NCSU, Raleigh, NC.

A new Japanese publication, comprised of the plenary presentations at the Designing for the 21^st Century was distributed to all the Workshop participants. It was edited by Satoshi Kose and published by TashiBunka. For more information, contact Satoshi Kose, satoshi.kose@nifty.ne.jp.

• The Symposium on December 3 was co-sponsored by the City of Yokohama as an event leading to the International Year of Older persons. More than 450 people attended the event that was moderated by Dr. Kose and featured the invited speakers from the International Workshop. Mr. Ishi Shiraishi and the deputy mayor of Yokohama welcomed the audience. The Symposium was fully reported in the Nikkei Newspaper (25th Dec., evening edition) with the support of five companies. They are: Asahi Chemical Housing Department, Sekisui Chemical Housing Department, Sekisui House, Tokyo Gas, and Mitsui Home. Nikkei, Japan Economist Paper, is similar to Financial Times or Wall Street Journal, and is the most influential for business sector.

• The Tokyo Symposium on Universal Design on December 1, 1998 was sponsored by the Universal Design Forum. It featured Mr. Coleman and Ms. Ostroff, and was attended by 150 people. The Universal Design Forum is a new consortium in Japan that is led by the Universal Design Magazine. The second issue of the magazine was just published, also dedicated to Ron Mace and includes his final lecture. For information on the Forum or the magazine, contact Dai Sogawa at sogawa@blue.ocn.ne.jp.

• Tama Art University: Professor Wada, Industrial Design Department of Tama Art University in Tokyo reports that universal design is incorporated in all four years of the program. The work at Tama was initiated with the support of NEC Corporate in Tokyo and was displayed and presented during the June 1998 conference. For more information, contact Tatsuya Wada at wada@tamabi.ac.jp.

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From the United Kingdom:

• The United Kingdom Institute for Inclusive Design is the new name of the British Institute of Design and Disability, the affiliate of the European Institute for Design and Disability. For more information, contact Andrew Walker at andrew@cottage.sonnet.co.uk.

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NEWS FROM YOUR SCHOOL/ORGANIZATION/COMPANY IS WELCOME!

E-mail Elaine Ostroff at elaine@ostroff.org by the 20th of each month for the next month’s mailing.

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NOTES FROM THE 4^TH UNIVERSAL DESIGN EDUCATION PROJECT FORUM:

The 4^th Universal Design Education Project Forum was held on June 21, 1998 at the close of the first "Designing for the 21^st Century, An International Conference on Universal Design". More than 40 people attended the half day session that was co-chaired by Elaine Ostroff and Polly Welch. Other people indicated interest, adding their name to the mailing list but could not attend. An annotated listing of some of the participating design educators was distributed; a compilation of the material that was sent prior to the Forum.

There were brief presentations from four schools involved in the Universal Design Education Project and two evaluation reports. Brainstorming followed the presentations. The whole group provided input on the following four topics:

1. Global Networking
2. Future Projects
3. Dissemination
4. Outreach to Other Professionals
5. Definition (this was added at the end of the meeting as an important topic)

The schools and the faculty who presented were: State University of New York at Buffalo, Ed Steinfeld and Abir Mullick; Eastern Michigan University, Louise Jones, Deb deLaski-Smith and Virginia North; University of Oregon at Eugene, Polly Welch and Stan Jones; San Francisco State University, Ricardo Gomes. The discussion following the presentation noted some of the teaching approaches in Europe, including Hubert Froyen’s teaching in architecture, in Belgium.

The evaluation reports included Virginia North’s preliminary evaluation of the Universal Design Education Project and Kate Vanderheiden’s initial survey of students who had studied universal design at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Please review and comment on the notes that came from the group brainstorming. If you have an idea that builds on any of the following notes, or any ideas that relate to ways to build more global, cooperative ways that we can work, please send comments, ideas to Elaine Ostroff at elaine@ostroff.org.

1. GLOBAL NETWORKING
1. E-mail network
2. Use European Search engine on the Internet
3. 1999 seminar in Canada
4. European Institute for Design and Disability (EIDD) conferences
5. Connect with designers with disabilities
6. Disabled People International network
7. Network with gerontology groups
8. Track with JFA? (what does this mean? Perhaps Justice for All e-mail list?)
2. FUTURE PROJECTS
1. Global UDEP
2. Global and national design projects
3. Include universal design in existing projects
4. Include people from developing countries (find support)
5. Get information from other professionals, specialties
6. Evaluation, looking at outcome measures; qualitative as well as quantitative; widely published
7. Further develop user involvement; find ways to educate and support this
8. Track legislation, policies internationally
3. DISSEMINATION
1. Journal of universal design research
2. Journal of applied universal design
3. Continuing education, including distance learning
4. Good examples and practices on the web
5. Use EIDD tools (information exchange)
6. Work more with accrediting projects; training the reviewers
7. More materials for industry
8. Additional forums
9. More international meetings; every two years. Hold in Europe and in Asia.
4. OUTREACH TO OTHER PROFESSIONALS
1. Assist all design professions in involving users in real world problems
2. Continue connection to professional societies
3. Work with different professions, not just in schools
4. Go to each profession’s conferences
5. Link to policy issues
5. DEFINITION

   Revisit to include examples of larger scale (This may refer to the Principles of Universal Design and the current predominance of examples in product scale.

(With apologies from Elaine Ostroff for personal delays in getting the Forum notes to you).

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NEWS FROM YOUR SCHOOL/ORGANIZATION/COMPANY IS WELCOME!

Adding your information, questions to the Online News: Send e-mail to elaine@ostroff.org by the 20th of each month for the next month's mailing. Articles should be limited to 600 words. If the issue is too full to include, and the timeliness of the article allows it, we may hold the item until the following month.

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Acknowledgments: The Global Universal Design Educator’s Network and the Global Universal Design Educators Online News is produced with support from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, of the US Department of Education.

Elaine Ostroff, Founding Director, Adaptive Environments Center, Editor.