Inclusive design and assistive technology as part of the HCI curriculum Helen Petrie and Alistair D N Edwards Department of Computer Science University of York HeslingtonYork YO10 5DD United Kingdom Helen.Petrie|Alistair.Edwards@cs.york.ac.uk ABSTRACT Designing for disabled and elderly users is an increasingly important topic within the HCI curriculum, particularly given the current legislative requirements. After introducing the concepts of inclusive design (ID) and assistive technology (AT), we present a number of arguments, some radical, some more conventional, for including them as part of mainstream HCI courses. We introduce some suggestions for what and how one might teach these topics within a mainstream HCI course, and a number of useful resources for teaching them. We conclude with some lessons we have learnt from a number of years of experience in including these topics in our own HCI courses. Keywords HCI education, inclusive design, assistive technology, disabled users, elderly users 1. INTRODUCTION: WHY INCLUDE INCLUSIVE DESIGN AND ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY IN THE HCI CURRICULUM? ‘Know thy users’ is a common motto in HCI, and many would add ‘…for they are not you’. No matter how well this message is conveyed to students, though, it usually does not extend to their realizing that users may be very different from them, HCI students being typically young, male (at least in computer science departments) able-bodied and highly technically literate. It is imperative that students learn an awareness of the needs of users with other characteristics, particularly disabled and elderly (potential) users of technologies and how to design and evaluate systems that meet these needs – for a number of reasons, as we will discuss below. First we discuss the terms “inclusive design” and “assistive technology”, relevant to designing and evaluating for these user groups. 2. INCLUSIVE DESIGN (AND ITS SYNONYMS) AND ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO TEACHING HCI CONCEPTS “Accessible design”, “design for all”, “inclusive design”, “universal design” and “universal usability” are all terms that have been used in recent years to convey a focus on: “the design of products and environments to be usable by everyone, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialised design” [1] However, as Vanderheiden and colleagues have noted [12, 13], there are probably as many definitions of these concepts, as there are people discussing them, and considerable misunderstanding. A common misunderstanding amongst HCI practitioners is that inclusive design (ID, the term we will use for convenience) requires systems that will be usable by every user, regardless of capability, and that to attempt to achieve this might seriously compromise their designs. Yet the reality is much more complex and interesting and it is important that future HCI professionals realize this. The definition offered by the European Design for All e-Accessibility Network (EdeAN) [4] for Design for All adds several more interesting, but less commonly mentioned aspects of the concept, but does incorporate some contradictions to the widely used definition above: