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Focus on inclusive design
Monday February 22nd 2010. Posted: 15:40
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BT works with people with disabilities
at inclusive design workshops
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BT’s focus on making technology much easier to use for all UK consumers has been highlighted in a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring inclusive design.
BT head of social responsibility and consumer affairs Liz Williams told Radio 4’s You and Yours programme: “It’s absolutely about designers putting themselves in other people’s shoes. For us, it’s about making sure that our designers think about the very customers they’re designing for.” The broadcast followed on from the recent BT-hosted industry event, Designs on a bigger market: the business case for inclusive design, and coincided with the Ergonomics: Real Design exhibition at the Design Museum in London - featuring the theme of inclusive design - which continues until 9 March. The broadcast looked at how, too often, products and buildings seem designed for the fully fit and active, and how older and people with disabilities have long complained about design which excludes them or ignores their needs. But it highlighted how, with an aging population, making products which take account of stiffening limbs and fading hearing will become “a commercial imperative”. Liz gave BT’s Freestyle 710 cordless big button phone as an example of an inclusively-designed product, and talked through how the key features benefit people with specific impairments - such manual disabilities and visual and hearing impairment. Toolkit The programme highlighted the importance of consumer testing and understanding consumer needs. BT’s inclusive design toolkit was discussed as an example of a tool for designers to simulate specific impairments. Liz said many products designed for people with disabilities go on to find appeal among able-bodied people too. “In my kitchen I have a cordless kettle,” she said. “That was originally designed for people with problems with their mobility. Now, most people have a cordless kettle.” Digital was described as the next new frontier for inclusive design, showing BT as at the forefront of tackling this challenge.
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Last updated:
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