The Anthropometrics of Disability - Designing Accessible Communities

• Avoid reliance on so called “standard postures.” People with disabilities
often cannot maintain a “standard” position or may not be able to hold it
for long. It may be desirable to measure people in several positions for
each task.
• A standard method for taking clothing into account is needed, especially
in functional studies where clothing may affect range of movement. Other
problems with this population are that many individuals may not be able
to wear “standard” articles of clothing, may be more reluctant to be
measured nude or partially nude, and may take a long time to change
into clothing provided at the research site.
Several participants suggested the use of standardization to improve the application
of anthropometric research to practice. These two recommendations summarize these
perspectives:
• Government agencies should strive to develop “performance standards”
rather than specification standards for design. Such policies could include
requirements or options (e.g. “equivalent facilitation”) to use
anthropometric and ergonomic tools like computer models in order to
accommodate a certain percentage of the target populations. It could
also include the development of consensus based testing protocols that
can be used for evaluating the accessibility of products.
• Develop a discussion group to standardize the methods in order to tie
anthropometric databases to computer aided design (CAD). This could
lead to a manual that could be used by researchers and human
modelers.
2. INCREASING USE OF FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES TO RESEARCH
The discussion centered on the need to put more emphasis on functional
anthropometry than structural anthropometry although the participants recognized
the importance of structural anthropometry in order to understand the relationship
between body (and assistive device) size and function. While many of the
recommendations focused on the general issues of functional anthropometry, there
were also a number of very specific recommendations about methodology with a
view toward developing research methods that reflect reality more closely.
Recommendations about functional anthropometry in general include:
• Functional anthropometry includes more than simple movement. There is a
psychological component. For example, maximum reach may not be
reasonable to expect on an everyday basis, especially for tasks that are
frequently repeated. An acceptable reach limit for a task would be a
more realistic functional approach. This may vary based on the context of
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