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The terminology surrounding universal design, accessibility, and many related terms and concepts have evolved into substantial linguistic discussions since the ADA law was passed. The ACCESS-ed Project has witnessed confusion emerging around these concepts. Consequently, this brief discussion around the terminology of universal design and accessibility proposes to help organize our thinking, at least for the ACCESS-ed Project and its applications.

• List of UD and Accessibility Terms
• Assistive Technology Design
• Mass Market Design
• Usable Design
• Universal Design of Buildings
• Universal Design (UD)
• Universal Design in Education (UDE)
• Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
• Universal Design in Instruction (UDI)
• Universal Instructional Design (UID)
• Inclusive Design
• Accessible Design
• Design for All
• Life Span Design
• Transgenerational Design
• Good Human Factors Engineering Design
• Good Interface Design
• Good Human-Machine Design
• User Friendly Design
• Accessibility,
• Usability
• Universal Access (Universal Accessibility)
• Ergonomic Design
• Accessible Medical Instrumentation

A part of the process to choose one term for our use in the ACCESS-ed Project we organized the items into categories. This smattering of term can be simplified in two ways.

First, a number of the terms are similar in that they describe UD as implemented to different target applications. For example, we might talk about universal design in the "built environment", universal design in "education" or universal design in "medical instrumentation". Conceptually, they are similar although one addresses architecture, one instruction and the third educational settings.

Second, an important distinguishing feature among these terms is whether the term represents an intervention or whether it represents an outcome. For example, "accessibility" is not intervention or methodology. It represents an outcome. Accessibility is what occurs when particular types of interventions or design pre-interventions occur. On the other hand, conceptually, the term "universal design" is not an outcome, but a process. Universally designing a product is how a product is optimally planned and developed. It is not an outcome of a design.

One might debate the point and say either type of term could be used interchangeably with the other. Perhaps we could list examples where these concepts are synonymous. However, we want to reduce confusion.

Consequently, we propose the intentional use of the term "universal design" as a verb that describes a process for creating products and environments that intentionally work optimally for everyone. Likewise, we propose that our intentional use of terms like "accessibility" and its derivatives be applied to describe an outcome. Of course this can be confounded by conjugations like "universally designed" or "accessible design", but it seems helpful to delineate that we have two important concepts. One is a process and the second is the outcome. Obviously we need both, but should be clear when we mean which.

While, we do not need to be linguist as we use these terms, it is helpful to have incorporated a basic understanding of these terms as we apply them.

So, which term should we use to describe the scope of the ACCESS-ed Project?
We chose UDE. See the following section on Why UDE not UDL? to read why.