Inclusive Design

Having a solid direction towards a thesis, the SCAD library gave me the ability to research previous student work, which come to find, can be a great inspiration.

The first work that came as an inspiration is that of Jessica Shields, “Inclusive Design; Providing Accessibility Through Visual Design for People who are Blind.”

The reason I was drawn to Jessica’s thesis is not only her topic of choice, and its similarities to my own, but the way it was broken down into its categories and the research conducted.

Jessica started off with the two categories, sociological conditions and psychological conditions. Her psychological conditions were then broken down into five categories: hearing, smell, taste, touch, and multiple sensory stimuli.

The research made it clear that the primary goal was to fully inform the reader of the condition, and all categories involved prior to continuing. Jessica talks less about the actual visual design/inclusive design mentioned in her title and more about the factual difficulties of being blind. Now I understand the problems that are involved, and can begin understanding the research conducted.

Jessica continues on, providing the reader with research that she conducted on four separate individuals, in order to better define the problem. She not only uses blind individuals, Jessica also conducts research on those involved with the blind community. It provides information as though the reader is seeing the world through their eyes, which provides the best insight to her topic of choice “inclusive design.”

Jessica concludes her research paper with solutions based off of the research that had been conducted.

Overall the research paper is a great tool to better understand the mechanics of a thesis research paper, and covered some remarkable findings.

I encourage everyone to read this paper, not only for similar reasons as my own, but also to better understand how to provide accessibility for the visually impaired in the field of design.