Thread by @iamscicomm

So what is universal design?

Universal design is a concept where the environment is built to be as inclusive as possible by design. It can accessed, used, interacted with and understood by as many people as possible irregardless of age, disability or other any other factors.

'Environment' is basically your situation. Universal design can be applied to a building, a lab, a course, presentation, report, demonstration, poster, and as many other things as you can think of.

The point is accessibilty is built into the design and not an afterthought.

There are 7 principles of universal design(ud)
1. Equitable use - if it needs to be altered the alteration is identical/ equivalent & has the same security & safety of original.

2. Flexible use - can be adapted to suit needs (eg) product can be used by left & right handed people

3. Simple - no unnecessary complications or language usage, consistent design.

4. Perceptible - information is given in multiple ways & has maximum readability.

5. Tolerance for error - minimize hazards and provide warning in multiple ways

6. Low effort - design is comfortable and efficient.

7. Appropriate size and space for use.
These principles can mean different things in different situations but I will touch on what they mean for the different scicomm methods I'll go through this week.

The schedule is pinned to the profile as the top tweet! I've tried to include the most common methods of science communication when planning but if there is something that I'm missing or don't explain fully please let me know!

Another important thing to say is that UD does not require you to think of every scenario that could arise & account for every disability. There will always need to be accommodations. UD is trying to minimize exclusion & maximize accessibilty but it'll never be perfect.

An example of a scenario that universal design could help with. I had a university lecture complain that they had to redo their entire course because this year there was someone who was visually impaired/blind. They had no accessibilty built into their course at all..

So they had to go through everything and make it accessible because they didn't do it in the first place and they had to change a good few parts of the course because the methods they were using were not accessible at all. This could have mostly been avoided if they'd used UD.

But to be honest, it's not 100% their fault. Yes, people should be more aware of accessibility but I've seen many universities, say they implement UD but they don't train anyone on it.
*I know science communicators don't exclusively come from universities, this is my experience.