UB IDEA Center receives nearly $5 million federal grant to continue pioneering work in universal design

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA Center) at the University at Buffalo has received a five-year, $4.85 million award from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) to continue its pioneering work in advancing principles of universal design.

This new round of funding means that NIDILRR, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Administration for Community Living,

will have provided 30 years of continuous funding by the time the cycle ends.

The funding will support the IDEA Center’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Universal Design Applications. The RERC’s goal is to engage consumers, designers, service providers and policymakers in designing, using and evaluating innovative and supportive physical environments, transit, information technologies and products.

Co-principal investigators include IDEA Center Director Jordana Maisel, PhD, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and associate dean for academic affairs for the School of Architecture and Planning (SAP), and Victor Paquet, professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Other UB team members include Korydon Smith, Mohamed Aly Etman, Heamchand Subryan, Jonathan White, Danise Levine, Nicole White, and Jimin Choi of the School of Architecture and Planning, Lora Cavuoto of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Michael Rembis of the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences.

“This important project will allow the IDEA Center to continue building upon their legacy, strengthen our school’s relationships across the university, and bring pivotal studies to our disciplines. I’m proud of our faculty for their dedication to driving real-world impact, and look forward to the emerging results of this work,” says Julia Czerniak, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning.

“The IDEA Center has been a global standard-bearer for universal design, and the next phase of their work will extend that impact even further,” adds Kemper Lewis, PhD, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “This award reaffirms our university's commitment to engineering a world that works for everyone.”

Housed within UB’s School of Architecture and Planning, the IDEA Center has been a global leader in innovations in universal design — a design process that enables and empowers a diverse population by improving human performance, health and wellness, and social participation — since its founding more than four decades ago.

The center’s previous RERC work included developments to improve access to public transportation for people with disabilities, as well as a first-of-its-kind program, called innovative solutions for universal design, or isUD, that grants certification to buildings that prioritize inclusivity within their design and operations.

Over the next several years, the center expects to produce new knowledge on how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence can inform and address user needs throughout the design and standards process; research findings on the effectiveness of universal design practice, including the health and performance benefits of UD; software tools to assist designers in implementing UD standards; and industry partnerships to improve community wayfinding.

Specific projects include:

• Improving work environments: One study will evaluate the impact of universal design features in work environments on perceived stress, physiological response as an objective health outcome on people with disabilities or the interaction of objective building system measurements with both perceptual and health outcomes for employees with disabilities.
  
  This research is timely as the need for more accommodating work environments is gaining attention as the prevalence of disability in the workforce increases. Yet, there remains a lack of understanding of the design features impacting employment outcomes among people with disabilities; this is particularly true for adults who are neurodivergent. The findings will provide evidence of the impact of universal design on employee health and performance in the workplace.
  
  
• New tools for designers: The team plans to complete strategic activities to improve and simplify regulatory accessibility standards and facilitate adoption of voluntary universal design standards. This includes an expanded and improved universal design certification program to address a wider range of user needs.
  
  
• Industry partnerships: A development activity will engage local and national stakeholders including the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, Touch Graphics Inc. and WayAround to develop, deploy and evaluate innovative indoor and outdoor wayfinding systems to overcome community mobility challenges frequently experienced by people with and without disabilities.
  
  
• Incorporating AI: Collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh will lead an effort to implement artificial intelligence-based methods for time- and cost-efficient expansion of the IDEA Center’s Anthropometry of Wheeled Mobility (AWM) database, the largest database of wheeled mobility user size and function in the U.S., which was originally created between 2000-10.
  
  Another research initiative will leverage a mixed reality environment to evaluate the efficacy of novel data-driven design tools on improving usability outcomes for wheeled mobility device users.
  

“In addition to these highlights, and a robust training, dissemination and technical assistance agenda, this five-year RERC initiative continues longstanding collaborations between some UB researchers and industry stakeholders, while also welcoming new colleagues and building new external partnerships,” says Maisel.

“A central goal of this initiative is to be innovative and forward-looking, while honoring the 40 years of groundbreaking work at the center,” she added. “We’re leveraging past successes and adapting them to meet new needs and methods.”