Technology for all: towards truly inclusive design

“1 Size Fits 1! We work on ensuring that creative and assistive technology and innovation tools and methods are personalisable for all users from the start, so that no hacking is necessary to ensure full usability for all, with no extra cost or effort either for the users or their communities.”

In the tenth installment of our researcher case studies we look at Professor Lizbeth Goodman of the UCD School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering.

How can we make sure that technology is designed to suit all the people who might use it? And how can we build technology that helps users with specific needs, such as People With Disabilities, People With Autism Spectrum Disorder, people with medical conditions such as Obesity, or Alzheimer’s Disease and, more generally, marginalised groups in society?
These are some of the questions that keep Professor Lizbeth Goodman at SMARTlab in the UCD College of Engineering and Architecture energised. She and the team in the Inclusive Design Research Centre focus on developing technology tools and innovation methods for real social change. Her work across numerous projects and programmes develops new approaches to designing inclusive technologies that suit the individual user. The research has helped people with severe physical disabilities to communicate and create in new way; it has supported local communities; and it is developing new ways to enable all people to show their strengths.

You can find the full text of her case study here: Technology for all: towards truly inclusive design