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Abstract

Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. Whereas this strategy is typically applied to broadly enhance usability of design—including its safety, accessibility, and simplicity—universal design can also be applied in a more focused manner to facilitate specific aspects of usability, such as wayfinding. In this chapter, the author describes not only what universal design is, but also what it is not: specialized designs to compensate for functional limitations. The chapter makes the case that specialized design, as embodied by the technical specifications in the Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines, defines a rigid set of prescriptive rules of what to do to promote safety and accessibility for specific individuals; universal design, as articulated by a set of performance guidelines embodied in the principles of universal design, describes how to promote usability and inclusivity—including community wayfinding—for everyone. Despite its potential, universal design has not been widely adopted as a strategy in promoting community wayfinding. The chapter addresses directions in research, policy, and practice necessary to promote universal design implementation.

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... Defining accessibility is that the quality of a built environment can be accessed by people with physical disabilities or the elderly. In parallel but contrasting, the term barrier-free design is a design concept to make a built environment accessible to people with physical disabilities or older people by removing the architectural barriers present in existing buildings (Sanford, 2016). The UD concept advances more comprehensively as it has the Seven (7) Principles of UD which characterize usable design solutions of products and environments, making this concept is more likely to be embraced worldwide including Malaysia and the Asian region as noted by local researchers (Kadir et al., 2013;Nur Amirah et al., 2018b;Yusof et al., 2016). ...
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We reviewed intervention studies that reported dementia caregiver outcomes published since 1996, including psychosocial interventions for caregivers and environmental and pharmacological interventions for care recipients. Our goal was to focus on issues of clinical significance in caregiver intervention research in order to move the field toward a greater emphasis on achieving reliable and clinically meaningful outcomes. MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health databases from 1996 through 2001 were searched to identify articles and book chapters mapping to two medical subject headings: caregivers and either dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Articles were evaluated on two dimensions, outcomes in four domains thought to be important to the individual or society and the magnitude of reported effects for these outcomes in order to determine if they were large enough to be clinically meaningful. Although many studies have reported small to moderate statistically significant effects on a broad range of outcomes, only a small proportion of these studies achieved clinically meaningful outcomes. Nevertheless, caregiving intervention studies have increasingly shown promise of affecting important public health outcomes in areas such as service utilization, including delayed institutionalization; psychiatric symptomatology, including the successful treatment of major and minor depression; and providing services that are highly valued by caregivers. Assessment of clinical significance in addition to statistical significance is needed in this research area. Specific recommendations on design, measurement, and conceptual issues are made to enhance the clinical significance of future research.
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