Ann Heylighen – författare

The Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT) are a series of workshops held at a Cambridge University College every two years. The workshop theme: “Designing inclusion for real-world applications” refers to the emerging potential and relevance of the latest generations of inclusive design thinking, tools, techniques, and data, to mainstream project applications such as healthcare and the design of working environments. Inclusive Design Research involves developing tools and guidance enabling product designers to design for the widest possible population, for a given range of capabilities.

There are five main themes:

Designing for the Real-World

Measuring Demand And Capabilities

Designing Cognitive Interaction with Emerging Technologies

Design for Inclusion

Designing Inclusive Architecture

In the tradition of CWUAAT, we have solicited and accepted contributions over a wide range of topics, both within individual themes and also across the workshop’s scope. We ultimately hope to generate more inter-disciplinary dialogues based on focused usage cases that  can provide the discipline necessary to drive further novel research, leading to better designs. The aim is to impact industry and end-users as well governance and public design, thereby effectively reducing exclusion and difficulty in peoples’ daily lives and society.

This proceedings book presents papers from the 10th Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technology. The CWUAAT series of workshops have celebrated a long history of interdisciplinarity, including design disciplines, computer scientists, engineers, architects, ergonomists, ethnographers, ethicists, policymakers, practitioners, and user communities. This reflects the wider increasing realisation over the long duration of the series that design for inclusion is not limited to technology, engineering disciplines, and computer science but instead requires an interdisciplinary approach. The key to this is providing a platform upon which the different disciplines can engage and see each other’s antecedents, methods, and point of view.

This proceedings book of the 10th CWUAAT conference presents papers in a variety of topics including

CWUAAT has always aimed to be inclusive in the fields that it invites to the workshop. We must include social science, psychologies, anthropologies, economists, politics, governance, and business. This requirement is now energised by imminent new challenges arising from techno-social change. In particular, artificial intelligence, wireless technologies, and the Internet of Things generate a pressing need for more socially integrated projects with operational consequences on individuals in the built environment and at all levels of design and society. Business cases and urgent environmental issues such as sustainability and transportation should now be a focus point for inclusion in an increasingly challenging world. This proceedings book continues the goal of designing for inclusion, as set out by the CWUAAT when it first started.

This book, Design for Sustainable Inclusion, was inspired and informed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These include, among others, ‘good health and well-being’, ‘reduced inequalities’ and ‘sustainable cities and communities’. Addressing this challenge requires a cross-disciplinary approach and close collaboration with many stakeholders. The Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT) 2023 invited participants from a wide variety of disciplines to contribute to the discussion on this topic.

This book represents the papers presented at this conference, chosen by peer review by an international panel of currently active researchers. The chapters within the book provide a unique insight into current national and international research in the fields of inclusive design, universal access, and assistive and rehabilitative technology. The main sections of the book reflect the following key themes:

•Understanding people

•Designing for an ageing population

•Inclusive built environments

•Healthcare

•Assistive technology

•Education and training

We hope that this book will be useful to researchers, teachers, students and the general public who are interested in inclusive design and sustainable development.

This book presents papers from the 12th Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT 2025), to be held in April 2025. This workshop series has hosted the multifaceted dialogue on design for inclusion since 2002, involving disciplines including design, computer science, engineering, architecture, ergonomics and human factors, policy and gerontology. The conference theme for 2025 is New frontiers for inclusion. The major themes dealt with in this collection include:

the possibilities and challenges for inclusive design offered by AI and other emerging technologies.

With its thematic wealth, this proceedings provides a unique insight into the current national and international research in the fields of inclusive design, universal access, and assistive and rehabilitative technology.

The Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT)  is one of the few gatherings where people interested in inclusive design, across different fields, including designers, computer scientists, engineers, architects, ergonomists, ethnographers, policymakers and user communities, meet, discuss, and collaborate. CWUAAT has also become an international workshop, representing diverse cultures including Portugal, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, Australia, China, Norway, USA, Belgium, UK, and many more.   The workshop has five main themes based on barriers identified in the developing field of design for inclusion: I   Breaking Down Barriers between Disciplines II   Breaking Down Barriers between Users, Designers and Developers III Removing Barriers to Usability, Accessibility and Inclusive Design IV Breaking Down Barriers between People with Impairments and Those without V   Breaking Down Barriers between Research and Policy-making     In the context of developing demographic changes leading to greater numbers of older people and people living with impairments, the general field of inclusive design research strives to relate the capabilities of the population to the design of products, services, and spaces. CWUAAT has always had a successful multidisciplinary focus, but if genuine transdisciplinary fields are to evolve from this, the final barriers to integrated research must be identified and characterised. Only then will benefits be realised in an inclusive society. Barriers do not arise from impairments themselves, but instead, are erected by humans, who often have not considered a greater variation in sensory, cognitive and physical user capabilities. Barriers are not only technical or architectural, but they also exist between different communities of professionals. Our continual goal with the CWUAAT workshop series is to break down barriers in technical, physical, and architectural design, as well as barriers between different professional communities.