Universal Design

"Universal Design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design." -Ron Mace

I absolutely love this quote and the entire idea behind it. The concept seems so simple, instead of making each individual find a way to use a product or the environment, why not just make it fully accessible in the first place?

As I watched the Ted Talk on this topic, and the presentation on Assistive Technology (AT), it reminded me of last summer when my friends played the card game Uno together, a competitive game solely relying on color and number matching. There was just one problem, we forgot one of our friends is completely colorblind. He wanted to play with us but was frustrated he kept having to ask the person next to him if the card he wanted to play matched the one in the middle. My quick solution at the time was just to take a sharpie and write out the first letter of each color word on all the corresponding cards in the deck. However, it made me wonder, why were the color words not already printed on the cards for this reason? Well, good news! Researching it again today I discovered Mattel did recently release a colorblind accessible version of Uno! Instead of the words though, this version of the deck includes symbols in the corners so it is not specific to one language either. Promoting independence in daily life is the name of the game in occupational therapy and Assitive Technology and Universal Design are exciting, effective ways to accomplish that goal.