Including users with disabilities

This SIG will begin the information exchange on designing for disabilities for professionals who have not formally considered disabled communities as part of their user/subject base before. Until recently, only professionals working in the area of assistive technologies/devices focused on design for people with disabilities. However, more applications, software, products and services that have typically been targeted at the general population now have requirements that they be equally usable by the "normal" healthy population of users and by users with various disabilities (e.g., physical, sensory, cognitive). For example, in the United States, the FCC has mandated that all telecommunication devices and services used by the general population be accessible by people with disabilities whenever it is readily achievable (i.e., without much difficulty or expense). To the extent it is not readily achievable for these devices to be accessible, then they must be made compatible with commonly used assistive devices [2][3]. There are other mandates and standards that are heading in the same direction [1]. For professionals working on products, services, and applications that are or will soon be impacted by these types of mandates, the typical methods used for design, data collection, and test will be fundamentally altered.