Experts are seeking to improve the design of equipment which aims to make life easier for disabled people.

Some new devices installed at disabled people’s homes are not used because of poor design, it has been claimed.

Funding of £250,000 has been awarded to a Dundee University project encouraging greater involvement of disabled people at an early stage of design.

The two-year project will also involve Dundee’s nursing and midwifery and computing schools.

The university’s Prof Jennifer Harris, an expert in social policy, said disabled people were too often an “afterthought” in the design process.

Improve efficiency

“There is a tremendous amount of waste in terms of the amount of new equipment that is put into the homes of disabled people and simply isn’t used,” she said.

“I have for instance seen automatic tin openers that are meant to be designed for use by disabled people but they come with the assumption that you have two working hands to operate the machine.

“Problems like that are all too common, and often there has been the temptation to stick a big bright button on a machine and assume that it can then be operated by someone who is disabled. That isn’t enough.”

The research, which received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, aims to improve the efficiency of the design process.

Story from BBC

Μεταφράζεται από την Αμαλία.