By Lori A. Mayne
The doorknob can be the biggest barrier to opening a door.
If you have severe arthritis and stiff hands, it’s not so easy to grip and twist. That’s one reason many doors now have lever-type handles that are much easier to grab — or even hit — open.
It’s the job of interior and industrial designers to make products and spaces easier to use. Since our population is aging, and, according to Statistics Canada, more than 17 per cent of Canadians have a disability, designers are taking accessibility to the drawing board.
“This is probably the next big wave. Designing for an aging population,” says Dorothy Stern, co-ordinator of the interior design program at Algonquin College.
To prepare for this wave, Algonquin’s interior design program requires students to learn about accessibility for themselves. For instance, they have to complete such tasks as going to the washroom in a wheelchair or withdrawing money from a bank machine blindfolded. Students also take courses in health care design and aging, Stern adds.
She says even small design changes can make a difference, brightly-coloured carpet on stairs, for example, makes steps easier to see for the visually impaired — and everyone else.
That philosophy — designing products and spaces that not only work better for those with disabilities, but for everyone — is called universal design.
“It’s not a matter of taking something and retrofitting. It’s making something fit for everybody,” Stern explains.
Automatic opening doors in airports, for example, provide better access for wheelchair users, but also for those carrying luggage. Likewise, larger bathroom stalls provide greater access for the disabled, and for those with children or those carrying several packages.
Stern says over the last 20 years the public has become more informed about the need to design for a diverse population.
Others in the industrial design world agree.
“We’re seeing things that people put up with getting addressed now,” says John O’Brien.
O’Brien’s company, HealthCraft Products Inc., is working with two industrial design students at Carleton University on products to help elderly and disabled people move around more easily: a transfer device to help people move from a sitting to standing position or from a bed to a wheelchair, and a device to help people up and down stairs.
Creating such devices poses a challenge to designers, who may not automatically relate to the needs of the disabled and elderly. “These students have a great deal of trouble picturing themselves in the position of the people they’re designing for,” explains Martien de Leeuw, a Carleton professor of industrial design.
Students often try out their own devices, but it’s difficult for them to imagine what it’s like having minimal leg strength when trying out the transfer device, for instance.
It’s also tough finding elderly and disabled people to test each product. “You want to try it out but you want to do it safely,” de Leeuw says.
Student Sunil Achia, who designed the transfer device, says he wouldn’t want the responsibility of knowing an elderly or disabled person got hurt testing his device.
For that reason, students often test products on relatives, friends or perhaps younger people with disabilities, de Leeuw says.
Still, a well-designed product does more than operate safely and work well.
A transfer device also maintain the user’s own capabilities. Using the device to stand, individuals brace themselves against it and pull themselves up, thereby working their own upper body strength.
On the marketing side, O’Brien says it’s important that caregivers or disabled individuals can install the product easily in their homes. The look of the product is important too.
“There are pride issues there. They don’t want their home to look like its full of hospital equipment.”
O’Brien’s business partner, Don Ed, says they try to create products that are easy to assemble and look “friendly” in the home.
And like any product, cost plays an important part. HealthCraft must design for a set number of customers to keep costs reasonable. “You can’t build products where maybe one person needs it,” Ed says.
That means it’s not always practical to design universally.
To illustrate, de Leeuw notes there’s a standard kitchen counter height of about 90 cm, which doesn’t suit everyone.
“For some people, it’s too high; for tall people it’s too low.” But it’s much more expensive to build adjustable counters, he says.
On the other hand, de Leeuw says in the case of a product like kitchen gadgets universal design makes a lot of sense. Big comfortable grips, he points out, are easy for many consumers to use.
To de Leeuw, universal design isn’t a new concept, just a greater awareness of the need to consider a diverse set of users.
“It’s been given a name and there’s more focus on it. Designers have been aware of these issues much longer,” he says.
An international conference on universal design intends to make such awareness even greater.
Inclusion by Design will be held in Montreal from June 1-5 and feature many industry players.
The discussions will aim to make universal design a bigger priority in government policy and community planning, says Joan Westland, executive director of the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work, the conference host.
Westland says design changes such as bigger parking spaces, bigger doorways in homes, and better-designed tools help everybody.
“We’re talking about access. It’s a community issue not a disability issue,” she says.