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Steinfeld co-chairs international
universal design conference
As baby boomers reach retirement, Edward Steinfeld, UB professor of architecture, served as co-chair of an international conference on a topic that could improve the quality of life for aging populations around the world: universal design.
The International Conference on Best Practices in Universal Design was one of six conferences focused on enhancing the lives of seniors, persons with disabilities and their family caregivers that took place this week in Toronto as part of the 2011 Festival of International Conferences on Caregiving, Disability, Aging and Technology.
Director of UB’s Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDeA Center), Steinfeld co-chaired the universal design conference with his son, Aaron Steinfeld, a systems scientist in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, and Peter Blanck, chair of Syracuse University’s Burton Blatt Institute. Jordana Maisel, the IDeA Center’s director of outreach and policy studies, also played a major role in organizing the event.
Universal design refers to the creation of buildings, products and services that are accessible to people regardless of their age or ability. Besides elders, such commodities could benefit such diverse groups as people with disabilities and veterans injured in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The universal design conference covered subjects including housing and home modifications, along with public building and community environments. Through speakers, poster sessions and discussions, participants learned about best practices, research methods and ways to disseminate information relating universal design.
The third day of the event focused on accessible transit, with presentations on broad topics such as barriers to mobility for older people using public transportation, and narrower topics such as a cross-disability study on the usability of ramp slopes.
The day’s activities doubled as the State of the Science Conference for the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Accessible Public Transportation, a multi-year effort that the Steinfelds are leading to study and develop methods to empower consumers and service providers to design and evaluate accessible transportation equipment, information services and physical environments. Carnegie Mellon is the center's lead institution.
Though the universal design movement has made significant progress, there is a strong need to advance evidence-based practice, Edward Steinfeld says. Researchers and service providers must evaluate current knowledge, identify limitations in current research methods and design practices, prioritize future research needs and disseminate information about successes, he says.
The June conference is important, he says, “because it explored new and exciting strategies to help support our increasingly diverse population. It brought together professionals and experts from around the world to address critical issues and questions about universal design in a format supporting dialogue and discussion.”
Edward Steinfeld is an internationally recognized expert on accessibility, design for the lifespan and universal design. He serves on the board of directors of the Global Universal Design Commission, and is one of the authors of the Principles of Universal Design. Current activities include development of universal design standards, design of a demonstration bus and development of a textbook on universal design.
He also is principal investigator of the RERC on Universal Design in the Built Environment, which encompasses research and development projects on topics including home modifications and the design of public rights-of-way, such as sidewalks and street crossings. Both the RERC on Universal Design in the Built Environment and the RERC on Accessible Public Transportation are funded through grants from the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.
With Katherine Seelman of the University of Pittsburgh, Steinfeld recently contributed a chapter on enabling environments, which covers accessibility and universal design, to the World Report on Disability, a joint publication of the World Health Organization and World Bank. The report launches today at the United Nations in New York City.
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