The Universal Design Game
Universal design principles, aimed at ensuring accessibility for individuals of all abilities and life stages, play a crucial role in shaping the built environment. However, teaching these principles to university students, particularly those lacking personal experiences with mobility challenges, presents unique challenges.
"The Universal Design Game" is a roll-and-move board game that integrates images of local streetscapes alongside narratives from individuals and communities with lived experiences of temporary and long-term mobility impairments. Engaging in critical reflection as a research method, this project draws from three years of iterative development and implementation of the game within a third-year urban design course.
Downloadable resources
A set of downloadable resources is available at the link below. Note that this is still an early iteration of the game - any feedback for successive versions would be greatly appreciated!
Conference paper
The game was presented at the AMPS ‘Teaching Beyond the Curriculum’ international conference in November 2023. A copy of the conference paper published from this talk is available at the link below (the paper starts at Chapter 24 or page 232 of the PDF).