Universal design and inclusive design: one solution for all?

Year 2 / Module 14 Accessibility, inclusive design and assistive technology / Unit 2 / Universal design and inclusive design: one solution for all?

Universal design and inclusive design: one solution for all?

HCI2106 · Unit 2 of 10

Universal design's promise of one solution for every user substitutes a designer's assumption for a user's evidence, and the inclusive-design tradition that followed it has fragmented the goal rather than settled it.

Universal design and inclusive design: one solution for all?

Universal design opens with a sentence that sounds like a solved problem. The design of products and environments should be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design (Connell et al., 1997). As a claim about the world it is enormous: a designer can know, without consulting users, that almost nobody will be excluded.

This second of ten units defends one claim. Universal design's promise of one solution for every user substitutes a designer's assumption for a user's evidence. The central claim is a coverage claim, and until recently it was untested against the population it names.

Stated exactly, the promise claims everyone

The seven principles were compiled in 1997 by a working group of architects, product designers, engineers and environmental design researchers, running from equitable use and flexibility in use to tolerance for error and low physical effort. Their purpose is triple: to guide design, to evaluate and to teach, though not every guideline applies to every design (Connell et al., 1997).

Mace (1998) made the promise concrete in housing, where universal design exceeds the minimum specifications codes require, standards have not mandated it, and it applies to few dwellings. The result he claimed is a home usable by, and marketable to, almost everyone without special assistive devices.

Shneiderman (2000) carried the ambition into computing and named the difficulty rather than the slogan. Universal usability requires affordable and usable technology for the vast majority of the population. It faces three challenges: technology variety, spanning roughly a hundred-to-one range of hardware, software and network access; user diversity, including those who cannot afford the newest device; and the gap between what users know and what they need to know. Shneiderman (2002) gave it a concrete form. A multi-layer design lets a first-time user begin at layer one and move up only when a task demands it. Difficulty orders the feature set, so a novice never meets the whole system at once.

The promise rests on an assumption about the user

Newell and Gregor (2000) described the design work universal usability implies, and were explicit about who decides. Their paradigm, user sensitive inclusive design, includes disabled people throughout a project while keeping the research questions and methods with trained researchers, so the designer settles in advance what the user needs and the user confirms a design rather than setting its target.

Keates and Clarkson (2004) give that assumption a commercial history: inclusive design remained a practical problem for industry, with teaching and industrial uptake very limited and products still excluding users unnecessarily. A claim untested because the method was never adopted is not evidence that it is false, nor that it is true.

Iwarsson and Stahl (2003) supply the theoretical reason the promise cannot be settled from the design alone. They argue that accessibility has a personal as well as an environmental component, that the two must be analysed together, and that the concepts describe different person-environment relationships. If accessibility is a relation rather than a property, no artefact is accessible in itself. Usable by all people is then meaningful only when indexed to a population and a context.

The tradition that inherited the promise never settled its name

Persson and colleagues (2015) compared universal design, inclusive design, accessible design and design for all, found little or no consensus on the definition and use of the concept, and warn that the confusion risks less accessibility for the people the work serves. Clarkson and Coleman (2015) tell a different story: tracing inclusive design in the United Kingdom to a framework and toolkit, they treat inclusive design, design for all and universal design as one approach, identified by what it replaced, designing for disabled and older people as a subset of the population.

Heylighen and colleagues (2017) settle the naming by use rather than definition, treating inclusive design as an umbrella term for universal design and design for all. Varied spatial qualities and use opportunities are what make an environment inclusive.

The concept became orthodoxy without being evaluated

The strongest evidence for this unit's thesis would be a profession that used the promise and delivered on it. Imrie (2011) finds the opposite: universal design has become orthodoxy despite limited evaluation of its theoretical content, and that content appears reductive and functionalist. It advocates marketisation as the route to accessibility, so that a right to access risks becoming a market transaction. A concept that cannot say whether specialised provision is a failure or part of inclusion cannot tell a designer what to do when one solution does not fit everyone. Imrie and Hall (2001) documented what the built environment delivers in the country that coined inclusive design: most United Kingdom homes cannot be entered by wheelchair, accessible transport is the exception, and pavements are cluttered with street furniture.

The field attached evidence and a relational theory to the promise

The response from inside the field has been to attach evidence and a theory of disability to universal design. Steinfeld and Maisel (2012) reframe it around how people perform, their health, wellness and social participation, distinguishing it from accessibility and arguing that design can meet the needs of an ageing population without specialised products or adaptation. Lid (2014) argues that universal design must correspond to a relational understanding of disability. That is the understanding the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities presupposes, in which impairment effects and disabling barriers both matter.

Contested question: has the promise been redeemed by evidence, or only renamed?

The literature disagrees about what should happen to universal design. The critical position holds that its theoretical content has never been evaluated and that the market has captured its practice. Imrie (2011) makes the conceptual case and Keates and Clarkson (2004) the empirical one. Limited uptake and continuing unnecessary exclusion are what a marketised, unevaluated concept would be expected to produce.

The renewal position holds that universal design is a maturing professional field whose weakness is implementation rather than conception. Steinfeld and Maisel (2012) treat it as design practice with an evidence base and a focus on participation. Heylighen and colleagues (2017) treat inclusiveness as a quality of the whole process, and Lid (2014) grounds it in a rights instrument. On this reading the promise is a commitment to be institutionalised, and failing to do so is a failure of professions and procurement rather than of the idea. The two sides also disagree about the naming, with Clarkson and Coleman (2015) and Heylighen and colleagues (2017) reading the four terms as one ambition and Persson and colleagues (2015) treating them as distinct.

The two sides rest on evidence of different kinds. The critical case rests on a conceptual critique of the term and a practitioner argument that the market has captured its practice. The renewal case rests on a practitioner synthesis of design practice and a rights instrument, and the naming dispute on a comparison of definitions and one national tradition.

The strongest objection is that almost no source here tests the coverage claim. Imrie (2011) reads the term rather than following a project, Keates and Clarkson (2004) record uptake rather than outcome, and Persson and colleagues (2015) compare definitions. One study tests it in part: Vahedi, Quinn and Cavuoto (2025) took 34 people, seven of them wheelchair users, through a hotel built to universal design principles, in a study the authors frame around older adults and wheelchair users; the wheelchair users still met heavy doors, high beds and too little turning space. The absence of a test was read as the failure; the one test that exists reports it too.

What would settle it is a comparison of consequences: following projects that adopt a universal-design commitment alongside projects that accommodate case by case, and measuring whether the most excluded users fared better under either. The terminological dispute needs different evidence, namely an analysis of how standards and procurement documents use the four terms.

What to do while the dispute is open

While the dispute is open, state the population a design is claimed to serve and record who was asked. Where a project claims every user, publish the coverage it measured and name those it did not reach: in later life, with low literacy, on a metered connection.

Where the argument is heading

The named work points towards institutions rather than artefacts. Burgstahler (2025) reports the Universal Design in Higher Education framework as a promising practice: proactive design of courses and services makes them accessible and reduces the need for individual accommodations. A framework and an implementation model spanning students, staff and disability professionals sustain the change. Heylighen and colleagues (2017) treat inclusive design as an answer to a diverse and ageing society rather than a feature set. Lid (2014) supplies the legal frame in which the commitment can be demanded rather than offered. The promise becomes a claim rather than a slogan when someone is held to the coverage it names.

The sources this unit rests on

Connell, B. R., Jones, M., Mace, R., Mueller, J., Mullick, A., Ostroff, E., Sanford, J., Steinfeld, E., Story, M. and Vanderheiden, G. (1997). The Principles of Universal Design. Raleigh: North Carolina State University. https://web.archive.org/web/20221005223030id_/https://projects.ncsu.edu/ncsu/design/cud/about_ud/udprinciplestext.htm Defines universal design as design usable by all people to the greatest extent possible without adaptation or specialised design, and sets out seven principles from equitable use to low physical effort. It is the canonical statement of the promise tested here.
Mace, R. L. (1998). Universal design in housing. Assistive Technology. doi:10.1080/10400435.1998.10131957 Argues that universal design in housing exceeds the minimum specifications accessibility codes require, and that those standards never mandated universal design and do not apply to most housing. It shows the promise operating where regulation does not reach.
Newell, A. F. and Gregor, P. (2000). User sensitive inclusive design: in search of a new paradigm. Proceedings on the 2000 Conference on Universal Usability. doi:10.1145/355460.355470 Proposes user sensitive inclusive design, which includes disabled people within a user-centred methodology while keeping research questions and methods with trained researchers. It states the boundary a team sets around user involvement.
Shneiderman, B. (2000). Universal usability. Ubiquity. doi:10.1145/347634.350994 Sets out universal usability as affordable, useful and usable technology for the vast majority of the population and frames the agenda around three challenges: technology variety, user diversity and gaps in user knowledge. It converts a slogan into three measurable problems.
Shneiderman, B. (2002). Promoting universal usability with multi-layer interface design. Proceedings of the 2002 Conference on Universal Usability. doi:10.1145/957205.957206 Promotes multi-layer interfaces in which first-time users start at a limited layer and move up when a task requires it, worked through a word processor with eight layers and an interactive map with three. It is the concrete design answer to the diversity Shneiderman (2000) named.
Keates, S. and Clarkson, P. J. (2004). Countering Design Exclusion: An Introduction to Inclusive Design. London: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4471-0013-3 Treats inclusive design as a practical problem for industry and records that its teaching and industrial uptake have been very limited, with many products still excluding users unnecessarily. The promise was never widely trialled where products are made.
Iwarsson, S. and Stahl, A. (2003). Accessibility, usability and universal design: positioning and definition of concepts describing person-environment relationships. Disability and Rehabilitation. doi:10.1080/dre.25.2.57.66 Positions and defines the three concepts, arguing that accessibility has a personal and an environmental component that must be analysed together. It presents universal design as process-oriented and gives the reason accessibility is a relation.
Imrie, R. (2011). Universalism, universal design and equitable access to the built environment. Disability and Rehabilitation. doi:10.3109/09638288.2011.624250 Argues that universal design has become orthodoxy despite limited evaluation of its theoretical content, and that the content appears reductive and functionalist. It finds advocates unclear about universalism and ambivalent towards specialist solutions.
Steinfeld, E. and Maisel, J. (2012). Universal Design: Creating Inclusive Environments. Hoboken: Wiley. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Universal+Design%3A+Creating+Inclusive+Environments-p-9780470399132 Reframes universal design around human performance, health and wellness, and social participation, and distinguishes it from accessibility. It argues that design can meet the needs of an ageing population without specialised products.
Lid, I. M. (2014). Universal Design and disability: an interdisciplinary perspective. Disability and Rehabilitation. doi:10.3109/09638288.2014.931472 Argues that universal design is an interdisciplinary subject that must correspond to a relational model of disability such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities presupposes. It gives the unit its relational repair and its legal frame.
Persson, H., Ahman, H., Yngling, A. A. and Gulliksen, J. (2015). Universal design, inclusive design, accessible design, design for all: different concepts, one goal? Universal Access in the Information Society. doi:10.1007/s10209-014-0358-z Compares the four dominant terms and finds little consensus on the definition and use of the concept. It warns that the confusion risks less accessibility for the people the work serves.
Clarkson, P. J. and Coleman, R. (2015). History of Inclusive Design in the UK. Applied Ergonomics. doi:10.1016/j.apergo.2013.03.002 Traces inclusive design in the United Kingdom from its beginnings to a framework and toolkit. It treats inclusive design, design for all and universal design as one approach defined by its inversion of designing for disabled and older people as a subset.
Heylighen, A., Van der Linden, V. and Van Steenwinkel, I. (2017). Ten questions concerning inclusive design of the built environment. Building and Environment. doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2016.12.008 Answers the common questions raised by inclusive design in the built environment, using it as an umbrella term for universal design and design for all. It places inclusiveness in the process rather than a feature set.
Burgstahler, S. (2025). The potential of universal design to promote accessibility and inclusion for disabled students. In The New Accessibility in Higher Education. doi:10.1093/9780197773482.003.0003 Reports the Universal Design in Higher Education framework as a promising practice in which proactive design of courses and services makes them accessible and reduces the need for accommodations. It argues that the change is sustained by a framework, an implementation model and engagement across stakeholders.
Vahedi, Z., Quinn, T. and Cavuoto, L. (2025). Assessing hotel inclusivity: a case study evaluation of universal design for older adults and wheelchair users. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology. doi:10.1080/17483107.2025.2481440 Took 34 people, seven of them wheelchair users, through a hotel built to universal design principles; the wheelchair users still met heavy doors, high beds and too little turning space. It is the unit's only test of the coverage claim against the users it names.

Check your understanding & apply it · 4 questions, 1 essay

1A design team writes: 'Our patient portal follows the seven principles of universal design, so the promise of one solution for everyone is discharged and no user population needs to be named.' Which diagnosis matches the unit?

2A standards committee must pick one term for a procurement document covering housing and digital services, and a member argues that the four terms are interchangeable so the choice is cosmetic. Which action does the unit's evidence support?

3A government publishes the seven principles and relies on the market to improve housing access, with no measurement of who is reached. What does the unit's critical position predict about the route?

4A reviewer asks the unit to show that its claim, that the promise has rarely been tested, is more than an absence of evidence. Which option states the concession the unit makes?

5Essay A hospital trust is rebuilding its outpatient booking service. The design lead writes in the brief: 'The new service will be universally designed, so it will work for every patient. We will not need to handle individual requests because the service is inclusive by design, and our own design team has the expertise to judge that. WCAG conformance will confirm it.' Assess this reasoning using the unit's argument. Say what the universal-design promise correctly asks for, what it assumes about the user, how the inclusive-design tradition has handled that assumption, where the literature disagrees about whether the promise can be kept, and what evidence you would require before accepting the brief's claim. Name the sources you rely on at each step.

Separate four claims. First, the ambition is the right one and it is the founding definition: Connell and colleagues (1997) define universal design as usable by all people to the greatest extent possible without adaptation or specialised design, and Mace (1998) shows the promise doing real work in a domain that accessibility codes do not reach. Proactive design of a booking service is therefore a better aim than repairing barriers after disabled patients complain. Second, the sentence 'our own design team has the expertise to judge that' is where the unit locates the problem. Newell and Gregor (2000) set out user sensitive inclusive design, in which disabled people are involved throughout but the research questions and methods stay with trained researchers, so the designer settles the target in advance and the user refines it; and Iwarsson and Stahl (2003) explain that accessibility is a relation between a person and an environment, so no service is accessible in itself. A claim to work for every patient is a coverage claim, and coverage cannot be certified from inside the design team; the one published test of such a claim, a universally designed hotel judged by 34 guests including seven wheelchair users, still found heavy doors, high beds and too little turning space (Vahedi, Quinn and Cavuoto, 2025). Third, the phrase 'we will not need individual requests' is exactly the assumption Keates and Clarkson (2004) found unfulfilled in practice, since they record very limited industrial uptake and continuing unnecessary exclusion, and Imrie (2011) argues the concept has become orthodoxy without evaluation of its theoretical content, with marketisation threatening to reduce a right of access to a market transaction. Fourth, the literature disagrees about whether the promise can be kept. The renewal position, Steinfeld and Maisel (2012), Heylighen and colleagues (2017) and Lid (2014), holds that universal design is a maturing practice attached to a relational model of disability such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities presupposes, and that the failure is one of implementation. The critical position, Imrie (2011) with Keates and Clarkson (2004), holds that the concept is unevaluated and that its vocabulary does reassurance work. To accept the brief I would require measured coverage: who among the trust's actual patients can complete a booking and who cannot, tested with people who use assistive technology, reported by population rather than by feature count. WCAG conformance cannot supply that evidence, and note also that the naming is not settled, since Persson and colleagues (2015) find little consensus on the terms while Clarkson and Coleman (2015) treat them as one approach under national conventions, so the trust should say which requirement a contract will hold it to.