1 October 2008

Designers come face-to-face with disabled users

Event - Tuesday 7th October, Queen Mother Building, University of Dundee
Interview/photo opportunities throughout the day (best times 10-10.30 am, 12.30 -1.30 pm)

The users of everyday devices supplied to people with disabilities will have the chance to tell the designers of such products exactly what they could be doing to make them better, at an innovative face-to-face session at the University of Dundee next week.

Professor Jennifer Harris, of the University's School of Education, Social Work and Community Education, has been leading a two-year project examining the relationship between design and disabled people.

'We have been asking two big questions with this study - are designers doing enough to make sure new technologies can be effectively used by disabled people? And how can disabled people be more involved in the design of new devices?' said Professor Harris.

'There are many examples of how design has not helped many people with disabilities. If you look at mobile phones for instance, handsets have got smaller and smaller, which has only made them harder and harder to use for many disabled people, who as a result can feel more excluded.'

'This is a big issue, and one which becomes very apparent with people who are deaf, for instance, where texting is extremely popular. A lot of these people say the phones were better when they were these `bricks’ of handsets that we used to see.'

'This session, which comes near the end of our study, brings the two sides of these questions together to explore some of the issues. We will have designers from some leading companies speaking directly to a group of people who have a variety of disabilities and have many different issues with the equipment they use every day.'

The User Day is being held in the Queen Mother Building at the University. The day will be split into two sessions - looking at phones in the morning and computers in the afternoon.

'These are the two main areas where we have found people have a range of issues, from size to accessibility, and from reliability to affordability,' said Professor Harris, who is an expert in the field of social policy and how it relates to disabled people.

'We all get frustrated by computers from time to time, but for many disabled people the computer can be the central device which controls many things in their home. If something goes wrong with the computer it isn’t a simple question of losing some documents or not being able to use the internet - it can effectively shut down their normal daily life.'

Among the companies who will be represented at the User Day are BT, Ricability, Hagger, Voice Text, 1st Class Media, Momentum Scotland, Humanware Europe Limited, and REMAP.

The two-year, £250,000 study - funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and involving staff in the Schools of Computing and Nursing at Dundee - is now nearing its conclusion.

For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk