Design

Information

This site

Accessibility

Accessibility is about ensuring that services can be accessed by all people including those who have disabilities.

"Universal design" is a useful design concept for making services accessible.

At any time one in five of Australians have disabilities.

These might prevent them from using:

• information
• built environments e.g. theatres
• websites

As well as Australians with disabilities, other population groups also have access needs. These include:

• Older people with limited mobility
• Parents with small children or babies in prams
• People who don't speak or read English well
• People whose friends or family members have access needs and won't go out without them

Design for universal access

For people with disabilities, universal design and access is the best approach to accessibility.

Rather than focusing on a particular disability, universal design focuses on making all environments, products and services accessible to all people.

In this way, universal access and design reflect the adoption of the 'social' model of disability.

Rather than the disability, this approach focuses on the removal of 'disabling' barriers for the benefit of all users.

The Center for Universal Design (North Carolina State University) has developed seven principles of universal design:

• Equitable Use
• Flexibility in Use
• Simple and Intuitive Use
• Perceptible Information
• Tolerance for Error
• Low Physical Effort
• Size and Space for Approach and Use

Principles of universal access and design should be used to guide all decisions regarding the development of environments, products and services.

These principles provide a template for creating a society and culture that is accessible and equitable.

Universal design accommodates the range of needs of a diversity of consumers and audiences.

As a business practice it encourages and allows the greatest possible number of people to access services, environments and products equitably and independently.

More information

For further information on Universal Design Principles visit the Center for Universal Design (North Carolina State University)

Also see the Resources section for resources relating to access.

Reading this site

This site is accessible to W3C standards based on analysis using the WebXACT accessibility tool. (Priority 1).

If you are having problems reading the text learn how to change the text size using Netscape or Internet Explorer browsers.

A new online conversion tool for making PDF format document accessible has recently been released.

For reading PDFs you can use Adobe's online PDF conversion tool.

If you are experiencing problems reading this site please contact Arts Access Australia

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