If you've been following along in order of these lessons, I just took you through a typical situation people experience when they have to modify homes that aren't built for their changing needs. In contrast, universal design dramatically reduces the frustrations and barriers of using a home.

The objective of universal design, thinking about it as a design process, is to provide universal accessibility. In other words, the goal is to design a home that, just works as best as possible, for as many people as possible, regardless of whether health condition that affects function is present or not. 

Think about the scenario I just described in the last lesson. What if a caregiver was coming home with someone who had just gotten out of the hospital and instead, they returned to a space without steps to get inside, a covered entry, a bathroom with a wide door and floor space inside, plus an easily accessed bedroom on the main floor.

Simply by the home environment's design, current and future occupants will save time, effort, and money and minimize many possible safety risks. In addition to universally accessible homes being usable for someone with physical needs, it's also designed to consider people and different household configurations that might have requirements due to difficulty with hearing, vision, learning, mental health, and a wide variety of sensory needs.

So instead of having a specialty home for each need, a universally accessible home or a universally designed home will consider all potential household needs under one roof.

Universal design isn't a new concept. In 1985, architect Ron Mace coined the term. He defined universal design as:

So what does this mean? Some pretty important pieces to this statement can be more easily understood if broken down.

The biggest challenge of designing for "all people" is making sure that it's functional for people with any type of impairment of the body or the mind, while ensuring that the design is useful for everyone.

Something that's universally designed will work for as many people as possible, regardless of struggles with any impairments. This image on the screen lists 24 different areas that people may have going on with themselves mentally, physically, and/or emotionally from difficulty interpreting or processing information, to loss of upper or lower body abilities, in addition to limited stamina and needing caregiver assistance. In the notes section below the video I'll write them all out, but as you scan the visual here or read the information below: 

That's a lot of people to consider when using any part of a home. What can make this even more complex is that one person may have multiple of these situations going on at the same time, as well as multiple people in the home can be impacted with several as well.

In addition, anyone that visits a home or stays there temporarily needs to be considered as well. One personal area that I think is important to note is making sure there's a consideration for the caregivers (paid or people in the family) that need the features of the home to be usable for them to help as well.

Adaptation is a process in which an individual changes how he or she typically interacts with something. So in this video, this person has to sit back away from the sink at an angle to reach the items to wash the dishes. She also has to twist herself to face the direction of the sink and wash the bowl over her lap.

This is different than how someone would usually do the task, by standing forward at a sink and washing the dishes over the sink. In this setup, adaptation wouldn't be needed, because the person who needed to do the task could sit and roll right underneath the sink to effectively complete the task without twisting to the side or washing the bowl over their lap. It works well for those who want to stand as well. 

Specialized design is for a specific demographic or need. This would be like the use of braille for those who are blind. Not everyone can use braille and that's geared to a more specific user. Or consider a ceiling lift. While not helpful for everyone, definitely crucial for some.

Universal design is inclusive of any generation someone belongs to or a health condition that someone may have. We do recognize that, yes, some people have significant functional needs that require specialized design. If universal design is the foundation and thought out during the design phase, adding in specialized features as needed, is much easier and more cost effective than if the design is fully specialized.

You will never know what changes you'll experience throughout your lifespan. So you want your home to be flexible enough to grow and change with you. Home modifications and universal design influence people's quality of life and independence in their homes. It's unrealistic for everyone to go out and build a new home.

So, home modifications are still needed, yet the entire community benefits if universal accessibility is implemented in new homes and neighborhoods. I hope these two lessons gave you a greater understanding of the need for both home modifications and universal design, and what the difference is between these two similar, yet different concepts.

You may be wondering, well, why don't people just make universal design the standard way of design? We agree. But there are some misunderstandings of what UD is and how it can be implemented. In the next section, we will help you uncover some of those barriers to understanding UD and why we feel it's been difficult for people to latch onto the idea for homes.