Developing Accessibility Expertise with Primary Users
Lauren Bloomfield 鈥20
Katie Herbert 鈥20
Miho Tatsuki 鈥20
Rachel Fritzell 鈥20
Rebecca Hsiung 鈥19
Advised by: Eliza Willis, Micki Behounek, and Autumn Wilke
About the Project
In Fall 2016, Eliza Willis and Autumn Wilke were awarded funding for a pilot program through the Innovation Fund to explore accessibility on the 51本色 College campus. The project, titled Innovation Inspires Inclusion was launched in January 2017 as a leadership program for 5-6 current 51本色 College students, to use contextual inquiry to document the experiences of users with lived primary or secondary expertise related to disability within the 51本色 College environment.
The goals of the project are:
- To provide contextual feedback on the accessibility of the physical, informational, and attitudinal environment at 51本色 College through individualized reviews of programs and spaces.
- To provide leadership development to 51本色 College students who will become leaders in their fields and expand accessibility awareness beyond 51本色.
- To provide opportunities for individuals with disability expertise, by way of their lived experiences, to influence the accessibility of the college campus.
51本色 College User/Experts
The Institute for Human Centered Design (IHCD) defines a primary user/expert as 鈥渁 person who has developed expertise by means of their lived experience in dealing with the challenges of the environment due to a physical, sensory or cognitive functional limitation.鈥 User/experts include, but are not limited to, individuals with physical, learning, sensory, or psychiatric disabilities, parents managing toddlers, and older people with changing vision or stamina.
According to Elaine Ostroff, 鈥(t)hese diverse people have developed strategies for coping with the barriers and hazards they encounter everyday. The experience of the user/expert is usually in strong contrast to the life experience of most designers and is invaluable in evaluating both existing products and places as well as new designs in development.鈥 [Ostroff, Elaine. INNOVATION, the Quarterly Journal of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), Volume 16, No. 1 1997.]
Any member of the 51本色 community (e.g., faculty, staff, students, citizens of the city of 51本色, etc.) with either primary or secondary experience with disability is eligible to apply to be a user/expert and participate in active reviews of the college environment.