From the Columbus [OH] Dispatch:

Rosemarie Rossetti and husband Mark Leder are building a universal design home outside Columbus, Ohio, which will double as their residence and a laboratory showcasing the latest accessible features. Rossetti, 56, was paralyzed from the waist down in an accident in 1998. The couple became frustrated when they couldn’t find a home that was suitable for someone in a wheelchair.

“I want it to be a catalyst for change in the building industry,” said Rossetti, a motivational speaker and writer.

The home, which will include features such as an elevator to the basement, extra-wide hallways, and lever handles on doors and faucets, will be available for tours and gatherings for architects, builders and others interested in universal design.

“Our intent is to have small groups for learning,” Rossetti said. “I want builders to recognize a need for universal design — that it is a design whose time has come for them to embrace it.”

In the New York Times, a discussion of the book “Design Meets Disability” by industrial designer Graham Pullin.

Alice Rawsthorn describes Pullin’s book as a “manifesto” that celebrates the heroes of disability design, “condemning many of the existing products designed for people with disabilities, and challenging designers to use their skills to develop inspiring alternatives.”

Pullin argues that those designing for people with disabilities need to come up with products that are both efficient and attractive, as has been done with eyeglasses.

Once classified as “medical appliances” by British doctors, they now come in countless styles, bear the names of famous fashion brands and are routinely sold with clear lenses to people who clearly don’t need to wear them. Tellingly, their designers often make no attempt to disguise glasses — or “eyewear” as they are now called — as they do with many other products, implying that it is somehow shameful to use them.

Earlier post here.

(Photo from the New York Times)

From the Boston Globe:

In his new book, “Design Meets Disability,” Graham Pullin makes the case that better design for people with disabilities could pay off in unexpected ways, benefiting both users and the broader society.

He wishes the design world would embrace disability, using it as a way to open up new ways of thinking about universal design — not just better accessibility.

For too long, Pullin says, the medical and design worlds have been strangers, and Exhibit A for their potential together is undeniably compelling: The iconic, curved-wood furniture of American midcentury designers Charles and Ray Eames, which evolved directly from their design of a leg splint for wounded service members in WWII.

Since then, Pullin says, bold examples of design for disability have been too few and far between. His book highlights many that do exist, from watches that can be read by touch and vibration to a pair of gorgeously intricate, hand-carved wooden legs worn by fashion model and double amputee Aimee Mullins.

Pullin is a lecturer in interactive media design at the University of Dundee in Scotland. He trained as a medical engineer.

Related post here.

(Boston Globe photo)

From the New York Times:

Designer Cynthia Leibrock is one of the leaders in the Aging in Place movement, creating beautiful spaces that will remain livable even as people find their physical capabilities declining with age.

Her own home, above, embodies the principles of universal design, which holds that all structures should be equally accessible to everyone. An excerpt:

“I’ve got a great one-liner for you,” Ms. Leibrock says. “The line is, ‘I want people to know no matter whether they have mental or physical disabilities’ — change that word to differences — ‘they are only disabled if they can’t do what they want to do. Architecture can eliminate disability by design.’ You see my point. If you are in a house where you can do what you want to do, you’re not disabled anymore.”

See also: Bringing Égalité Home — New York Times. Universal design makes homes adaptable, except in France.

(New York Times photo)

From Newsday:

A home adapted for five residents who are diagnosed as deaf-blind is the first of its kind in New York and is expected to provide a model for the nation. There are an estimated 70,000 people who are deaf-blind nationwide, although some experts say the number may be as high as 1.5 million.

The interior of the home was designed to accommodate for the disabilities of the residents with features like beds that vibrate to signal an emergency and over-sized kitchen knobs. At Destiny Home, the state also provides for “life coaches” who help the residents communicate and accomplish daily tasks, and some of the residents obtain jobs.

The state-funded duplex has a staff of 15 people who work in shifts around the clock, and the home costs $1 million annually to run.

From MSNBC,  Reuters, EETimes, and Agence France-Presse:

Musician Stevie Wonder and advocates for people with visual impairments came to the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, encouraging companies to make products that can be used in a “vision-free” manner.

Advocates say popular touch screen devices pose particular challenges for people who are blind, and say work is needed to make those devices more accessible. “Can I ski 60 miles an hour downhill? Yes. Use a flat panel microwave? No,” joked Sendero Group CEO Mike May, who is blind. Sendero makes GPS navigational devices that have an audio output.

Wonder praised accessible products like the iPod music player and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, and said his wish list includes a car he could drive and a Sirius XM satellite radio he could operate. “If you can take those few steps further, you can give us the excitement, the pleasure and the freedom of being a part of it,” he said.

(more…)

From the New York Times, a feature about Google’s T.V. Raman, a Silicon Valley software engineer who is called the computer industry’s leading thinker on accessibility issues. He built a version of Google’s search service tailored for blind users, and is now working on an accessible touchscreen phones.

Raman lost his eyesight at the age of 14. He can solve a Braille Rubik’s Cube in 23 seconds.

Instead of asking how something should work if a person cannot see, he says he prefers to ask, “How should something work when the user is not looking at the screen?”

As Raman designs software to make electronic gadgets and Web services more user-friendly for people with visual impairments, he is making improvements that will likely be useful for sighted people as well — like drivers who need eyes-free access to a phone.

(T.V. Raman with guide dog Hubbell and colleage Charles Chen, New York Times photo)