Saturday, 8 November 2014

Design and disability





Hello there,

Here is another idea for a lesson you can do with BTS DG, DE, MANAA or any artistic or design-oriented group:

There is a chapter in the book entitled TOURISM2 published by Oxford University Press which deals with the topic of interior design for the disabled and which contains some useful vocabulary.
The chapter I am talking about is called Specialized Tourism (10 p.84). I guess I am not allowed to scan the whole chapter, but to give you a taste of it I can show you a page with the oral practice where students have to decide what needs to be done so that the reception area is adapted to people with special needs.




you get to introduce the following words: wheelchair users, hearing and visual impairment, mobility difficulty, hearing-aid, the blind, the deaf, hand-rails, ramps, signs in large print, wide doorways, motorized buggy, low-level switches, remote control opening device, guide dog, purpose-built...

as well as the following structure:

sth needs to be done/ or needs doing

Once you have done the vocabulary and listening exercises, you can divided students into groups so that they can present inventions, devices, objects, concepts that have been created for the disabled. These may include the following:

CASTLEDOWN FONT( a dyslexic-friendly font)

 http://www.castledown.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Castledown-Font-Leaflet.pdf

BRADLEY(a watch for the disabled) 

http://www.medgadget.com/2013/07/bradley-watch-for-blind-from-eone-timepieces.html

PEEK (portable eye examination kit)


 http://www.peekvision.org/

or the MUSIC BOX for people suffering from dementia

 http://www.watershed.co.uk/news/a-music-memory-box-for-dementia



Good luck with your lesson.