Student designs improve life for people with disability - 2003

12 June 2003

In an unusual combination of disciplines, QUT's fashion and industrial design students have joined forces to design new products to make life easier for people experiencing disability.

Students spent time with a diverse range of creative people from Access Arts, an organisation set up to encourage creative practice by people with disabilities.

They then came up with innovative designs as diverse as a labelling system for clothes that gives visually impaired people fashion advice to a cup that senses when it is full.

Head of QUT Fashion Associate Professor Suzi Vaughan said in Queensland, around 20 per cent of people lived with a disability, making it an important experience for students.

She said it was particularly valuable for fashion students who were being trained for a career in an industry that did not traditionally have to respond to client needs.

"Fashion has become increasingly about show business and shock value. It doesn't often involve itself with people's real needs and that's something industrial designers do everyday," she said.

"But with an ageing population it's important for students to work with real demands.

"Also the customer these days has quite strong thoughts about what they want to buy which is quite different from the days when the designer led the passive consumer."

Industrial design lecturer Sam Bucolo said the real benefit for industrial design students was working with real people with unique needs.

"It was an essential awareness building exercise - they had to go to people's homes and see the barriers for them to do everyday things like catch a bus," he said.

"The other challenge was incorporating universal design. A common issue with designing for people with disability is that the product volumes are often too small to justify large investments in design development.

"With universal design the objective is to ensure the wider community could also make use of the design."

Spokesperson for Access Arts Ludmila Doneman said members were delighted with the results of the project.

"This practice should be encouraged and explored in other fields including town planning, architecture, marketing, performing arts, health, education and transport," she said.

Among the designs was a labelling system that would help visually impaired people buy, select, organise, care for and coordinate their wardrobe; branding for clothes aimed at providing visually impaired teenagers with fashion advice; a bag for people with spinal injuries and visual impairment that provides ready access, protection against theft and internal organisation; a cup that senses when it is full and a spiral bookcase that spins up and down to improve access for cerebal palsy sufferers.

Media inquiries:	Suzi Vaughan (07) 3864 8258, Sam Bucolo (07) 3864 2076 Ludmila Doneman (07) 3358 6200 or Toni Chambers (07) 3864 4494 or 0407 747 950.

IMAGE: From left fashion design student Carla Bergs, industrial design students Faith Ong and Philip Wee with creative partner Katherine Brennan from Access Arts.