The development of guidelines for inclusive design

Our Community Support Committee has funded a 3 year project to develop and promote a generic inclusive design toolkit. BT has been working with the Centre for Inclusive Technology and Design (CITD) and the i-design project since 2005 and the toolkit was launched on 12th July 2007 at the New Designers Event in London.

CITD was founded by Scope and is led by Sagentia. It is a group of organisations with expertise in the area of inclusive design that have come together to encourage more UK businesses to adopt inclusive design principles. The i-design project is an ongoing collaborative research programme on inclusive design led by the Cambridge Engineering Research Centre.

The toolkit guides businesses through the design process with the aim of developing accessible products usable by people with reduced capability. It shows that an inclusive design approach results in better products with greater user satisfaction and greater commercial success. Inclusive design is simply better design.

BT is also pleased to be sponsoring a student award through the RSA's Design Directions, inclusive worlds project. The BT Award is for an inclusively designed ICT product. Winners will be announced in Spring 2008.