Our BdB team would like to thank the University TEL team who have helped us set up a Blackboard organisation for the project. The organisation provides us with an online hub to share resources on inclusive design across the three schools participating in our BdB project. It also provides a range of interactive tools for collaboration and sharing of ideas and projects for students enrolled on our different degree programmes and will be a valuable way for us to share, evaluate and review our T&L initiatives.

Suha Jaradat has left the University of Reading and moved on to a new, exciting role at Kingston. Our BdB team wishes her every success in her new role and look forward to creating and exploring new opportunities to collaborate with her on inclusive projects. Good luck, Suha!

Breaking down Barriers has kicked off the academic year with a workshop in inclusive design with our new Part 1 typography students. Today we had our first session for the BA Graphic Communication Integrated Design Methods module. The students engaged with the new SEE-IT sight exclusive prototype for assessing visual inclusion/exclusion (currently being developed by the University of Cambridge as a new addition to their inclusive design toolkit). Working in pairs, they measured visual inclusion of typographic elements in business cards, leaflets and mobile apps.

The workshop was an engaging way of introducing typography students to the task-based learning approach used in this module. It also provided an effective introduction to inclusive design and the kinds of factors designers need to consider in their decision-making. The module focuses on user-centred design applied to a range of genres including: editorial design (‘design for reading’), pictograms and wayfinding, and digital design.

Typography lecturers Rob Banham and Jeanne-Louise Moys facilitated the workshop. We hope our students will continue to use inclusive design tools to support their decision-making in practical projects throughout their degree. It was also a great way to enrich the student experience with technology-enhanced learning.

Our thanks to Joy Goodman-Deane and Sam Waller who introduced us to the tool at Include2015 and gave us permission to use their prototype in our teaching.

Typography students Theo and Stephen team up to measure the ex/inclusivity of leaflet designs.

Typography student Polina setting up to measure ex/inclusivity in cover design.

Typography students Kash and Kundai calibrating their phones to measure visual inclusivity.

Typography students Amber and Orla evaluating the visual ex/inclusivity of capitalised letters on business cards.

Christina and Jeanne-Louise presented our poster about Breaking down Barriers at Include 2015 earlier this month. They also participated in a range of exciting inclusive design workshops. One of our highlights was the tactile mapping workshop – here’s Christina collaborating with Junko (right) and Yasuyuki (centre) from Kyushu University in Japan.

Thanks to the generosity of the UoR TLDF fund, the Faculty of Science and SCME and to the endeavours of our project team and others, we are delighted to announce that we now have, or have ordered, a range of resources for experiential learning and developing relevant T&L materials. These include:

• a laptop, video camera and software
• two bariatric suits
• wheelchairs
• and gloves and glasses which simulate a variety of impairments.

We are starting to prepare T&L materials based on experiential learning and cross-school collaboration for delivery in the autumn and spring terms in two Schools.

We have also thought about how we can discuss and share what we are doing with internal audiences and have created:

• promotional postcards
• posters
• a range of useful images
• and, of course, our blog and BdB email address: bdb@reading.ac.uk.

In September, we are booked to give a presentation at the CHOBE (The Council of the Heads of Built Environment) iBEE conference (Innovation in Built Environment Education) and to present a poster at INCLUDE.

Watch out for our forthcoming article in the Autumn edition of the UoR T&L magazine.

This represents excellent progress in six short and very busy weeks: many thanks to all who have made this possible.

Our ‘Breaking down Barriers’ cross-disciplinary team is committed to embedding inclusivity within curricula of built environment professional education (BEPE), graphic communication and beyond.

We’re enhancing student experience and employability through:

• Developing a cross-disciplinary expert knowledge base
• Prioritising experiential learning with a strong user focus
• Engaging with real-world scenarios and external organisations

Our focus is on the inclusion of disabled people and, specifically, on inclusive environments.

Our team combines expertise from the School of the Built Environment, the Henley Business School, and the School of Art and Communication Design. Our core members are: Christina Duckett, Geoff Cook, Joe Doak, Jeanne-Louise Moys, and Suha Jaradat. The breadth and depth of expertise on which the project draws allow our students to benefit from a wide range of influences with real-world application to the design and management of buildings and places and information design.

We’re excited about sharing our practice with you on this blog.