EMPIRICAL TESTS OF THE CLAIMED BENEFITS OF UNIVERSAL DESIGN

摘要

To test the claim that designing environments according to the seven Principles of Universal Design makes them more usable for everyone, this research project examined people's experiences with universal design through two case studies of buildings that varied in their design features' acknowledgment of those principles. The data from these studies proved supportive of this claimed benefit of universal design. They were also encouraging for the continued development of universal design as a design philosophy and as a demonstration of the potential of iterative performance evaluations of buildings to advance the further development universal design.