USERfit Tool . A tool to facilitate Design for All Julio Abascal, Myriam Arrue, Nestor Garay and Jorge Tomás Laboratory of Human-Computer Interaction for Special Needs Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. Informatika Fakultatea. Manuel Lardizabal 1, 20018. Donostia-San Sebastián. Spain {julio,myriam,nestor,jorge}@si.ehu.es Abstract. USERfit is a well-established methodology focused to the generation of usability specifications, specifically created for the Assistive Technology field that proved to be very suitable for the Design for All paradigm. This methodology uses paper-based forms to store and propagate the design related information. For this reason some issues -such us the inclusion and elimination of new users or contexts of use or the need to prop agate the results between forms- make the specification process tedious. This paper presents an application called USERfit Tool developed in order to facilitate the use of the USERfit design environment. In addition, USERfit Tool allows to reuse previously developed material and to share the design information between remote groups of designers, maintaining the coherence and the compatibility. 1 Tools for Design for All Design for All –also known as Universal Design- is a well-known design philosophy that supports the consideration of all type of users from the beginning of the design process. Its objective is to avoid designs that exclude part of the possible users due to their physical or cognitive characteristics. This philosophy, firmly supported by people working for user with disabilities, is quickly spreading among other sectors of the industry. Diverse web sites 1 , conferences 2 , and books 3 have very much contributed to this diffusion. Nevertheless it must be acknowledged that it is yet far away of being adopted by mainstream industry. There are many reasons for this situation, but one of the most important is the lack of tools and methodologies that help the designer across the whole process. This paper presents a tool, based in the well know USERfit environment, intended to help designers to produce usability specifications oriented to the Design for All. 1 E.g. the one of TRACE Centre: http://www.trace.wisc.edu/world/gen-ud.html 2 1st and 2nd International Conference on Universal Access in Human - Computer Interaction. http://uahci.ics.forth.gr/ 3 For example, “User Interfaces for All: Concepts, Methods, and Tools” edited by C. Stepanidis [10].