A Transdisciplinary Approach to Accessibility for Novice Designers’ Education of Inclusive Design

Whether for a unique in-door experience or virtual assistance, the interactive use of mobile devices has brought up new perspectives for designers across fields. The design and development of mobile applications that offer interactive spatial experiences for their users have brought new responsibilities for the twenty-first century designers. When it comes to design of these assistive technologies for the physically impaired, designers are expected to be more empathetic to their end-users and cautious about the values of the physical space. Hence, it has become essential for novice designers to develop a deeper and broader understanding of the concept of accessibility in their design education. And without a doubt, this progress needs new frameworks that empower educators to facilitate the concept of accessibility for their design students. For that, we share the impacts of encouraging a transdisciplinary approach to accessibility in design education within the outcomes of our design workshop. Last year, we organized a design workshop for an inclusive indoor navigation app design for smartphones to discuss the concept of accessibility over different fields of design. With this workshop, we wanted to grab and raise students’ attention to accessibility issues in universal design by following a transdisciplinary approach. We aimed to design a learning experience and create a theme for students from different departments to develop an understanding of accessibility in design over different disciplines. The workshop was held with the participation of 55 novice designers from interior architecture and game design departments. Based on our experience with the workshop outlined in this paper, we identify that encouraging accessibility with a transdisciplinary approach has provided an improvement in the designer’s understanding of inclusive design.