Suppose you’re in charge of designing the environment in the workplace or the classroom. What if you could design it so that everyone can access it. What if by designing features so that disabled or marginalized people can use it in the best ways for them, everyone can use it in the best ways? That’s the basic premise behind universal design. When you design something for those with the least access, you thereby design it for everyone.
It sounds great. But does universal design work? Does it run into limits? Let’s think about these questions.
Does It Work?
Of course it works! It works amazingly well in select cases. Consider the examples of the curb cut, the sidewalk ramp, and the rolling suitcase.
Most readers probably walk past curb cuts without thinking about them. Cities add them to the point where the sidewalk meets the road. They introduce a tiny graded ramp to eliminate the sharp break between sidewalk and road. People using wheelchairs thereby easily cross from the one to the other and back again on the other side. So, they’re very well designed for certain groups of disabled people. But everyone else benefits from curb cuts, too. It reduces the risk that they trip and fall.
Sidewalk ramps work in a similar way. Cities use ramps in front of buildings as an alternative to stairs, which many disabled people cannot navigate. Even people without, e.g., a wheelchair, more easily trip and fall on stairs than on ramps.
And who doesn’t love a rolling suitcase? Would you rather go back to the kind that doesn’t roll down the street? Of course not.
In short, everyone wins with curb cuts, sidewalk ramps, and rolling suitcases. Everyone navigates their environment more effectively.
The Limits of Universal Design
While it works great in the above examples, it works less well in other situations. In this sense, universal design is a lot like other ideas I discussed in previous posts – e.g., elevator words, ‘ACAB,’ mutual aid, lived experience, mobilizing, and so on. They work in paradigm cases, but they struggle when we stretch them beyond their sensible boundaries.
Let’s start with some core tensions. Universal design practitioners struggle to balance between standardized design and accessibility design. In other words, designers often face a choice. They can create something that most people want or something that a few people need. They also struggle to balance what works with what is aesthetically pleasing. Critics sometimes charge them with designing things that are, as one critic put it, ‘bland and tasteless.’
In short, universal design sometimes slips into a bad dichotomy. On the other hand, designers can build something that looks great and works great for most people. However, it might not work for some disabled people or others who fall outside the ‘norm.’ On the other hand, designers can focus on disabled people or people outside the ‘norm.’ This focus might result in a design that works OK for everyone, but most people find it clunky and cumbersome. It might also lack good aesthetics and come in a highly standardized, one-size form.
Adjustable Standing Desks
To get at this tension, I’ll discuss a couple of common examples. Both of these examples – adjustable standing desks and Zoom meetings – take up lots of space in the business world.
The basic idea behind the standing desk is simple enough: it’s a motorized desk with a switch allowing the user to raise or lower it. They can thereby stand or sit while working. Many sources advocate for it on universal design grounds because it allows, e.g., users in wheelchairs to raise the desk to an appropriate height to accommodate their needs. Overall, the desks work much better for many disabled people than standard office desks in corporate cubicles or open office plans.
So, what’s the problem? The standing desk often fits poorly into office cubicle designs and lack some of the key features (e.g., curves and contours, special spaces for keyboards and mouse, et al.) that come with standard height desks. It’s usually better for disabled people. For others, however, it’s often rather lousy in comparison to the alternative.
What should we do about this? I don’t know. It looks like a limit case for universal design – a case where the option that’s better for marginalized people isn’t better for everyone else. It looks like a case where people have to make a decision that balances interests.
Zoom Meetings
And then we come to the Zoom meeting. Readers probably remember those from the early stages of the COVID pandemic. These meetings saved literally thousands of lives. They kept millions from gathering in person during the spring and summer of 2020. However, many readers also know about the problems. For example, online education failed in just about every measurable way.
In terms of access, Zoom meetings worked wonders. Suddenly thousands – maybe millions – of people long shut out of public meetings, remote work, activist groups, et al. – could finally attend. They benefited a ton from all this new access. On the other hand, the move to heavily online events created all sorts of problems. After a short wave of increased participation, activist groups started to lose members and enthusiasm. They really needed in-person community experiences.
And so, once again we seem to have conflicting interests. Moving to online only meetings carried benefits for accessibility, but it turned out pretty crummy for most people.
Some Lessons
The universal design movement undermined the idea that design should revolve around the needs of non-disabled, adult men. That’s its biggest win, and in that sense everyone should endorse it. But when we dig into the details, we also see its limits. Ultimately, one has to note these limits and do the best one can to balance different interests.
Of course, there’s a standard reply to some of the ‘limits’ above. One might point out that the whole point of the movement was to resolve (or dissolve) these very tensions. Maybe the people in the challenging cases simply got it wrong! Maybe they should study universal design principles harder!
But I find this a facile reply. At best, we have a No True Scotsman fallacy. If people keep misapplying principles over and over, at some point we need to ask whether the principles are flawed. At worst, I think the reply just ignores how the world of design works.
Companies pay big money for design, and designers aim a lot of work at those companies. Those companies like to save money. And I find that many extensions of universal design principles fail because bad design is less expensive.
Putting a bunch of adjustable standing desks into an office building might not work for most people. But it’s probably far less expensive than offering custom desks or working toward a truly universal design. Going all online or all in person – both options that are non-universal and quite bad for some people – is probably far less expensive than offering a good hybrid experience.
And so, the centering of business need leads, again, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
