Universal Design

Accessibility compliance is a minimum standard added to serve people with disabilities; universal design, named by Ronald Mace, treats usability by everyone as the starting condition rather than an add-on.

Accessibility compliance typically means meeting a building code minimum requirement for people with disabilities, added onto a design that otherwise assumes an able bodied user. Universal design, the term coined by the American architect and wheelchair user Ronald Mace, reverses that order: it starts from the premise that buildings and products should be usable by everyone, across age and ability, without special adaptation, through features such as step free entry, legible wayfinding, and doors and controls that do not assume one kind of body. The two overlap in practice, since a universally designed building will also meet accessibility codes, but universal design is a design philosophy rather than a regulatory floor.