Accessibility has to be integrated in products, services, spaces or anything else in designing, in order to save time, money and get a better result which can ensure real accessibility. That´s why designers have an important role in providing accessible environments and products for everyone.

In the case of products, is necessary to research, know our customer´s needs within their diversity, see how competitors are tackling them and in which way our solution may improved theirs, incrementing customers satisfaction. To know some more tips,  this article offers some guidelines which can be helpful to implement accessibility in designs from the earliest stages.

In the case of environments, architects and designers need to be awared of the importance of applying universal design principles in their works. And with this goal in mind, the Istanbul Technical University is working with partner organizations from Turkey, Germany, Italy, and Finland in the Erasmus+ Project: Practicing Universal Design Principles in Design Education Through a CAD-Based Game (PUDCAD).

This Project tries through role-playing, experiential learning, educational scaffolding, and repetitive spaced-out learning methodologies to train and teach designing students about universal design principles, stressing in the key role of the decision process of the design team.

The main intellectual output of the project is designing a one-day educational experience that includes an architectural design workshop and CAD based game platform for undergraduate design students to learn and adapt universal design guidelines into spatial experience and in a practical an effective way.