The paper describes an iterative development process used to understand the suitability of different inclusive design evaluation tools applied into design practices. At the end of this process, a tool named Inclusive Design Advisor was developed, combining data related to design features of small appliances with ergonomic task demands, anthropometric data and exclusion data. When auditing a new design the tool examines the exclusion that each design feature can cause, followed by objective recommendations directly related to its features. Interactively, it allows designers or clients to balance design changes with the exclusion caused. It presents the type of information that enables designers and clients to discuss user needs and make more inclusive design decisions.

In the UK, only 66% of people over the age of 65 and 29% of people over the age of 75 have used the Internet. While it is important to design inclusive Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for this population, ''older people'' are often lumped together by designers, negating the diversity within this population. One important factor that is not taken into account is gender differences during learning. There is a rich history of research in how men and women react differently to various aspects of the learning experience, particularly success and failure, but this knowledge has yet to be incorporated into many ICT designs. This paper discusses the gender differences literature as it relates to user interface design for the aging population.

The paper discusses the challenges encountered defining suitable methods to test the hypothesis for research investigating inclusive design in the industry. It outlines the outcomes of an exploratory study with designers and clients in order to describe how the research hypothesis was formulated. The hypothesis considers the impact of information about inclusivity into the design decisions made by clients and designers during design meetings. The paper reflects on ways in which the hypothesis could be tested in order to preserve the scenario as closed as possible to the reality of the industrial process. It considers the advantages and the disadvantages of industrial and laboratory settings. The overall focus is to identify the setting and methods that would result in realistic answer to the research question. The paper concludes by proposing a scenario which could benefit from the current research context without affecting their applicability to design practice in industry.

Touchscreen technology has been shown to offer advantages to older and novice users of digital products, through the relative ease of learning the interaction mechanisms and flexibility of the interface to provide explicit and contextual labelling enabling task sequences to be executed. Interaction problems caused by age related changes in sensory perception, cognition and motor skills are able to be predicted using the Inclusive Design Toolkit, however this technique is unable to predict usage problems caused by lack of prior experience of digital interaction patterns. This paper reports on the 'errors' that older users made in a pilot study using a tablet touchscreen device in the course of completing tasks such as turning the device on, setting an alarm and sending an email. An initial classification of the problems encountered by the users is made and the potential for prediction of such errors is discussed.

Methods for involving and understanding users are of key importance for effective and inclusive design. However, many of these methods have had limited uptake, due in part to a poor fit with the ways in which designers think and work. We therefore conducted a card-sorting study with twenty-one product and communications designers, examining their views of design methods in general, and user methods in particular. The study was analysed using hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis. In this paper, we present some of the initial results, describing the main categories of design methods used and discussing the designers' views of the roles of user methods in design.

This paper presents an analysis of the structure of the prevalence of disability and medical conditions in a representative sample of over 5000 people in the Great Britain 16- adult population. Using data from 1996/97 Great Britain Disability Follow-Up Survey, exploratory data analysis revealed the general increase in loss of ability in the older population. Summary characteristics are presented for five age groups and design implications are drawn for the practice of inclusive design.