The Anthropometrics of Disability - Designing Accessible Communities

10. INCREASING COMMUNICATIONS AND DIALOGUE
An important underlying theme of the discussion was continuing and expanding
communications and dialogue about the issues addressed at the Workshop. Participants
realized that the anthropometrics of disability is important to many stakeholders, not all of
whom were well represented at this first gathering. They also recognized that the
Workshop was only a beginning to what could become a long-term endeavor fueled by
mutual interests. While the Workshop was focused on discussion among experts, those
present understood the importance of education and outreach to other interested parties.
In particular, they voiced an interest in educating both research sponsors and “consumers,”
design and rehabilitation n professionals, manufacturers, code officials and developers,
and end users of products and environments.
Recommendations for increasing communications and dialogue included:
• Work with the Access Board, NIDRR and the Department of Justice to develop research plans. These plans could be based
on patterns of complaints and needs for information that surface during the process of resolving complaints.
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Although the Access Board is focused on regulatory activity, other agencies could
take the lead in developing best practice as opposed to minimum standards. These
could be leadership documents that could point the way toward changes in the
regulations over time. For example, performance based standards that utilize
computer models, use of outcome measures that focus on comfort or task
effectiveness, etc.
Use existing data, best practice information and expert opinions to augment
codes. Such information could be used to develop more exceptions in warranted
cases and variations that would be appropriate to certain facility types. This
would be a preliminary step before enough data is available to revise codes to
reflect the differences in user populations and environmental context.
Future communications and dialogue could focus on specific issues that are of concern to a
variety of practitioners and researchers, including engineers, rehabilitation therapists,
human factors specialists and designers. Some of these include:
• Developing standardized postures for measurement of people with disabilities
• How data fusion and data mining could be applied to functional anthropometry
• Effective ways to present structural and functional anthropometric data for use by
designers
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