Universal Design as a Strategy for Developing and Implementing Government PolicyEinar Lund, Adviser, Ministry of the Environment, Norway The Universal Design strategy has proven to be effective in areas where the traditional accessibility line of action has little impact or has lost its momentum. It has also demonstrated is capability to be flexible and it can be applied to the design of products as well as buildings and out-door areas. But does universal design have the capability of giving meaningful contributions to the development of national policies? If so, does this produce concrete results that improve the life of the citizens in general and people with disabilities in particular, or does the ideology of universal design become too diffuse when mixed with high-level politics. These were of the some of the uncertainties when the first phase of the Norwegian Plan of Action for Universal Design was launched in 2002. The plan's objective was to implement and use universal design in all relevant decision-making in public administration. The main targets in the public administrative systems were the ministries and the central government. More than 10 ministries had areas of responsibility where universal design was relevant. Some of them, like the Ministry of Fisheries and The Ministry of Defence, had little previous experience with design for all and universal design. Others had a long history of responsibility and active efforts to improve the accessibility for people with disabilities, and did not immediately see the need change their approach. In general, most parts of the national government were unfamiliar with universal design, and had more than enough to attend. On top of this, the implementation of universal design was not supposed to require increases in the budgets, and the budget of the Plan of Action for Universal Design itself was very limited. The presentation will describe the thinking behind the Plan of Action for Universal Design, how it was organised and conducted, the failures and factors of success and the results so far. The results span from inclusion of the universal design strategy in political thinking, national laws and regulation to concrete results in a number of sectors. The challenges of developing and conducting a programme of this category in a rich, industrialized European country with long traditions as a welfare-state will be discussed in the presentation. What may be considered to be the ideal place to accomplish a national reform based on the principles of universal design, also have its unexpected disadvantages. One is the traditional understanding of problems concerning disabled being part of a well developed and professionalized social sector. Another is to reach results in areas where the politicians and the government want improvements, but do not have, or do not want to use, the most effective instruments to achieve them. The means of any government to achieve design for all and universal design are limited. A number of different participants need to engage in the subject to bring about significant results. A discussion based on experience from different countries on which factors are the more important, will be stimulated in the presentation. |