The IDU is oriented to a particular outcome, to ensure environments, products and systems are safer, healthier, and more usable and address the needs of the widest possible audience. True Inclusive Design will engage the widest population as actual users’ not just potential users. The expected outcomes of the unit are as followed:
The Functional Performance Impact
- The IAU will be renowned as the first Saudi and GCC University to offer more inclusive designed settings, products and services, and therefore to eradicate most challenges faced in the university daily activities. As a result, it will attract the maximum numbers of "qualified" faculty members and students from all over the world to work and study in the university as this latter provide the most prominent ways to success;
- The IDU's mission, via its consultancy and applied Studies divisions, will make it possible to upgrade Universities and other public settings functional performance and to predict their usability for specified activities by all users. Interventions will be based upon the latest sound academic evidence bases but also will abide by the socio-cultural context of the region, thus adding more integrity to the suggested interventions;
- The IDU's scope of work and applied Studies will help shift the paradigm from designing “special interventions” for “special populations” (i.e., accessible design) to designing more inclusive environments that enable all users, regardless of their personal characteristics or functional abilities, to participate fully and equally in all the setting’s activities (i.e., Universal Design);
- The IDU foresee several benefits for a diverse population via their interventions;
- Therefore, it will ensure functional independence and opportunities for social participation for all users;
- The IDU interventions will expand markets beyond functional limitations and aging to embrace highly qualified students, faculty members and staff;
- Finally, the IDU will develop empirically- based Inclusive Design guidelines and rating systems. The goal of these guidelines will be to enable all users, regardless of their varying personal characteristics and functional abilities, to participate fully and equally in the activities afforded by designed environments. This giant step, parallel to series of successful implementations, will be an important phase to transform the guidelines into Saudi codes.
The Leadership Impact
- The IDU will be the first university consultancy and applied Studies unit for inclusive design, in the GCC and the Middle East, with the highest standards scope of work that corresponds to the level of the top worldwide universities and applied Studies centers specialized in this field and thus will play its leading and distinctive role in this substantial field, regionally and internationally;
- Therefore, the IDU will serve as a consultancy division for professionals, advocates or even building mangers to evaluate environments’ inclusive usability directly;
- The IDU will provide a business advantage for other universities and all other organizations by (1) increasing a consumer base and customer loyalty; (2) Reducing operating and renovation costs; (3) Increasing productivity; and (4) Expanding the labor pool by making the work environment useable by greater numbers of people .
- Finally, the IDU will train and generate qualified audit members to assess the usability of indoor and outdoor features. Those future experts will be involved in the applied Studies and consultancy divisions and enable the IDU to expand its benefits locally and regionally to cover governmental and private institutions.
The Organizational Structure of the Unit
- The IDU team will be formed as a community of experts, each with a different perspective on inclusive design along with a qualified administrative backup team. The initiation and formation of each team will be according to the availability of the projects and its requisites.
