How can consumer rights be overlooked

It discusses some strategies and design approaches which can be adopted to improve the situation. It then collates and summarises work being done, including initiatives, research projects, guidelines and standards, and concludes with recommendations to the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission aimed at improving the situation in Australia. In contrast, technology regularly enables people with disabilities and older people to perform all manner of professional and academic tasks independently, allowing for gainful employment, undertaking a course of study, keeping in touch with friends via mobile phones, and generally being able to access computers and the internet.

However, technology used in the home still falls very short of enabling increased independence for people with disabilities and older people. Some everyday life examples from people with disabilities are provided, demonstrating the access challenges of blindness, dexterity and aging with consumer electronics and appliances, but It is not just about the accessibility needs of people with disabilities, it is about basic needs that all or nearly all of us will have at some time in life.

The scope of the project included home entertainment systems and their remotes; whitegoods and other appliances; home environment and control; portable devices; and personal care, health and fitness devices. It is well documented that designers are prone to design environments and devices best suited to their own situations, architecturally and technologically.

Even in , manufacturers, marketers and designers still create devices that are suited to their own cerebral capabilities, full vision, hearing and dexterity. It is quite amazing and disappointing that the younger designers of today persist in designing a world and things in it, which in many cases cannot be used by the generations that came before them.

This is the heart of the problem. Too often, when designing products, attention is given to a narrow notion of who will use the products, with little thought given to the numerous groups of people which the product design will exclude.

In the simplest terms, a product is designed in the context of a likely user or group of users. Industry appears to lack awareness of the access needs that have high incidence in potential users of their products;.

Designers are disproportionately concerned with visually aesthetic user interfaces in many products. This is an increasing problem for people who are blind or vision impaired, and for many people who have cognitive disabilities.

Even if they do, they put these problems aside or say they will look at them down the track. Sometimes the smallest change can make a difference. For example, simply by adding some basic tones to provide audible feedback on the operations of a device, can make it accessible to people who are blind or vision impaired. This lack of awareness may be one of the key reasons why people with disabilities have not been more vocal about their need to have more accessible options.

Part of the problem is limited collaboration between manufacturers, a highly competitive market and rapid technological development. As an example, most home electronics standards tend only to apply to protocols for device inter-connection, media formats and other non-user interface domains. Unlike technology developed for business, government and industry, there is no consolidated pressure for conformance, inter-connectivity or accessibility with regard to consumer electronics.

There is inconsistent awareness by industry of the need for accessible mainstream design, which will include people with disabilities and older people. More progressive design approaches, such as User Centred Design, which are described in the paper, are a path towards the design of more inclusive products.

However, this can only happen if people with diverse capabilities and limitations, are included in product and user research. In order for real change to occur, the manufacturer needs to change its processes and its values, so that pressure to create products that are more accessible is top-down, and not just from a few interested employees.

The paper briefly discusses some classical and contemporary design methodologies, which either restrict or could have the potential to lead to the increase of accessibility and usability of mainstream products. It then explores some current design trends, in particular Universal Design, which have significant promise for the future.

Finally, the paper reports on guidelines, standards work, research projects, online resources and some products that are more accessible, before closing with 15 recommendations, which are summarized on the next page. Broaden discussions with Standards Australia to include access for Consumer Electronics and Appliances.

Guidelines have been available since explaining the approaches needed to make consumer electronics accessible to people with disabilities. Now, 15 years on, the situation has hardly changed, and in many cases has worsened. During that time we have seen ATMs become accessible; people who are blind are able to cast a secret and independent ballot, and gain access to the internet and computers, as well as access to many advances in mobile phone devices. But when it comes to washing machines, cooking appliances, changing the channel on a VCR, adjusting the temperature of house heating or cooling, setting the alarm on a clock radio or reheating a meal, access and options have profoundly regressed for people who are blind, and people with dexterity issues.

People with diverse disabilities, either permanent or temporary, are also being disadvantaged. This report examines the current situation regarding the level of accessibility of consumer electronics and appliances for everyone, as well as for people with disabilities and for older people.

It is not just about the accessibility needs of people with disabilities; it is about basic needs that all or nearly all of us will have at some time in life. This paper explains and articulates the vast access problems daily encountered by countless people with disabilities and older people and discusses some strategies and design approaches which can be adopted to improve the accessibility of consumer electronics and home appliances.

It then collates and summarises work being done in this important area including initiatives, research projects, guidelines and standards, and concludes with recommendations to HREOC aimed at improving the situation in Australia, and considers ways the DDA can be harnessed to further the accessibility of consumer electronics and home appliances.

In this discussion paper, we examine the access issues for a wide range of consumer electronics and home appliances. The project was commissioned because it was perceived that there was a gap in the areas of accessibility focus falling outside high profile areas such as telecommunications, PCs, computer operating systems and the World Wide Web, or any areas pertaining to public procurement. It can be argued that considerable progress has occurred with the built environment and public spaces, telecommunications and technology for business, and those products that tie in with public procurement policies.

Clearly, this is not the case for the area of consumer electronics and home appliances, even though there are one or two exceptions. One factor is that the legislative framework is less targeted in this domain, or at least has not been exercised.

Several people the author consulted reflected that if the DDA had definitive penalties, as does the workplace safety legislation, that we would likely live in a much more accessible country. Similarly, education and awareness to industry regarding consumer electronics access is not nearly as prominent as efforts are in other technological domains. Everyday activities may seem mundane, however for people with disabilities they can create stress, or even crises, due to the plethora of products designed without their needs in mind.

What are the factors that have lead to accessible voting, banking, finance and telecommunications, but which fall short of addressing or even putting into the spotlight the most basic and fundamental tasks of daily living? Online, one frequently sees petitions to organizations like Google and Yahoo! Though not explicitly in scope for this paper, Appendix A discusses a group legal action to US phone suppliers regarding their poor record with accessibility.

But in contrast, technology regularly enables people with disabilities and older people to perform all manner of professional and academic tasks independently. These include allowing for gainful employment, undertaking a course of study, keeping in touch with friends via mobile phones, and generally being able to access computers and the internet. However, technology still falls very short of enabling increased independence in the home. The following scenarios capture some of the problems daily encountered by various people with disabilities, in relation to consumer electronics and home appliances.

The scenarios primarily focus on blindness and dexterity, but similar examples abound for other disability groups and other situations, such as having a broken arm, an eye infection, children screaming in the background, and so on.

Finally, John is getting married. He is blind and Dianne his wife-to-be, has restricted dexterity due to quadriplegia. Family members are already asking how they can find appliances, etc. They heard horror stories of friends who went house-hunting, only to find that they would need to re-equip the major kitchen appliances - oven, stove and dishwasher in the new house, because all the appliances when pre-installed were not accessible by people with either limited vision or limited dexterity.

Modern ceramic cooktops make it very difficult for blind people to centre the pan over the heat source; ovens with strong door springs and hinges are difficult to open for people with limited strength, and range hoods which had control switches hidden inside a small concealed cavity, are impossible to operate for people with dexterity or fine motor limitations.

Jane is nearly totally blind and plans to live on her own. They walk into a department store and ask the staff person to show them washing machines and clothes dryers that can be used by someone without sight.

Eventually they locate a store specializing in whitegoods and find a staff person who understands the problems kind of , who explains that she only has one older washing machine model, which still has rotary dials and switches, but has a poorer energy rating. Jane, somewhat disappointed, decides to buy this washer, but wishes she had the choice to buy a more modern model.

Jane was very lucky to have mentioned her frustrations to a friend who then told her that he had purchased a Fisher and Paykel clothes dryer, which had quite good tactile symbols, and made different tones for different settings. With some braille labelling, it was reasonably easy to use, but one still had to remember the sequence of the different settings.

The Fridge and Freezer were easier for Jane to choose. Finally, Jane could choose the product based on features and how it felt and looked, rather than being restricted by too many access considerations.

She particularly liked the feature that beeped annoyingly if the door was not properly closed. Jane also decides to get a sound system and DVD player, only to find that it is almost impossible to know in advance whether or not she will be able to use the equipment without help from friends or neighbours when she gets it home. They have absolutely no idea if she would be able to use it or not. She has noted two sound systems she would be interested in, based on reviews of audio quality.

However, when she goes to a store to look at the two recommended models, she is disappointed to find they appear to be among the least accessible because of complex menus that wrap; a remote control incorporating a touch screen, and a continuous volume control knob which gives no tactile indication about what level the volume is set to.

Having concluded her shopping, Jane has finally started to memorise the series of steps required to adjust her sound system to play CDs, and to turn on her set top box to get TV channels. All is fine, until she pushes the wrong button and everything goes silent. If only she could read the displays, or if she could read the manuals which are only available in print, and are full of icons and pictures she might get some clues as to trouble-shooting. Now Jane will have to ask her brother to visit again , to help her get things running.

Appendix B contains email to the author that further expands on access challenges with Hi-Fi equipment. Just as Jane starts to feel on top of some of her access challenges with the appliances in her apartment, she is asked to work interstate, and is being put up in a company-owned apartment in Melbourne. The problem is that the dishwasher, microwave, cooktop and washing machine are all unusable by a person without sight.

Chris has recently retired from work because of health issues - increasing arthritis and a tremor in his hands. Commonplace tasks like replacing the bag from his vacuum cleaner are getting difficult and painful, requiring twisting and pulling, which further inflames his arthritis. This report makes occasional reference to other classes of devices mobile phones or non-electronic items kitchen utensils , because research in such areas shed some light on the forces at play in manufacture, design and marketing of consumer electronics, or positive success stories which may be transferable to this area.

These figures are largely based on self-reporting. Interestingly, estimates of people with some kind of hearing impairment are nearly one in five, and the same again for Australians with some level of arthritis.

This suggests that the official figure could well be understating the size of the population with some kind of disability. But, in fact, the situation is worse than that.

For all of us, whether we consider ourselves disabled or not, we will, at some time in our life — whether through age, illness or accidents, have a short or longer-term disability.

It is well documented that designers are prone to design environments and devices best suited to their own capabilities, architecturally and technologically. Even in , manufacturers, marketers and designers still create devices which are suited to their own cerebral capabilities; full vision, hearing and dexterity.

More progressive design approaches, such as User Centred Design, which are described later in this paper, are a path towards the design of more inclusive products. For example, even with modern market research, the people who are selected usually represent people who have no disabilities. Market Research participants firstly need to get to an external location, then they need to be able to read information, complete survey forms, respond to visual mock-ups of products and services etc.

At times, some organizations have been in contact with manufacturers to explain the needs, eg. The author was told about such contact with Electrolux by the Royal Society for the Blind in Adelaide. Although both interest and understanding were initially shown, eventually off-shore manufacture and changes in the manufacturing organization meant that results never came to fruition. As discussed below, some change in corporate culture appears to be underway in the US with WhirlPool, although to date this is only reflected in a few products.

Research at WhirlPool found that adding tone feedback to the controls on washers and dryers was also helpful to, and appreciated by customers with full vision, as it gave extra confirmation of their instruction.

LG is also known for its use of audible tones, to provide information about washing machine settings and modes. Different people are negatively impacted in different ways by the inaccessible design of consumer electronics and home appliances. This discussion paper gives particular attention to dexterity and vision issues, however the problem is even more widespread and impacts on a huge number of potential customers and consumers of products.

In the following paragraphs we briefly explore different faculties and impairments and how design decisions in products will affect each of these groups. Everyone is unique in their abilities to see colours, judge distances, and see things up close and far away. These abilities can be affected by the demands of everyday tasks such as inserting a key into a door lock in the dark, reading a book under the glare of bright sun, or driving in heavy rain. Additionally some people have difficulty seeing due to disabilities like colour blindness, glaucoma and cataracts, through to total blindness.

In modern products, the use of touch screens and menus in place of mechanical interfaces can make them completely unusable by people without sufficient vision, whereas in the past, whilst it was helpful to have vision to use the product, the process could be learned or memorised. This is described in detail in a conference Article from the National Federation of the Blind.

Modern designs frequently minimise colour contrast with silver buttons on silver backgrounds, etc. Everyone is unique in their abilities to carry on a conversation, detect the direction a sound is coming from, and hear high- or low-pitched sounds. These abilities can be affected by the demands of everyday tasks like hearing normal sounds with a head cold, using a mobile phone on a noisy street corner, or operating noisy machinery.

In addition, some people have difficulty hearing due to disabilities like tinnitus. So smoke alarms, door bells, intercoms, which only produce audio, can be ineffective. Everyone is unique in their abilities to reach, lift, carry, and manipulate objects. These abilities can be affected by the demands of twisting a door knob with wet or oily hands, writing with your non-dominant hand or unlocking a door while carrying groceries.

In addition, some people have difficulty using their arms and hands due to disabilities like arthritis, bursitis and tendonitis, or loss of one arm. The trend towards miniaturisation for electronic products maybe cool, but can obviously make them very difficult to use for people with fine motor control problems, tremors, etc. With the remote control lying on a flat surface, with the underside curved at the edges, pressing one of the buttons located on the left or right edges of the remote control makes the remote control tip.

Also, like with mobile phones, the buttons are becoming smaller and placed close to each other. Everyone is unique in their abilities to receive, understand, remember and act on information. These abilities can be affected by everyday tasks like driving safely while having a conversation, concentrating while under the influence of medication and trying to follow confusing road signs.

The trend towards ever-increasing lists of features, complex menu structures, buttons and settings on devices has challenged everyone, but particularly for people who have more difficulty comprehending, remembering or making decisions.

For people with significant cognitive disabilities, adding one extra step in a process can be the difference between whether the device can be used by them or not. For example, when a television set only had a volume control, a channel selector nob and a control for vertical hold, almost anyone could work it. But with multi-media home entertainment systems, it is often the eight-year old who has the best understanding of the complex interactions between different components of the system.

One of the strategies that people who are blind adopt in order to use consumer electronics is to memorise the complex set of steps needed to perform a task. This is challenging because they are unable to see the feedback of their actions. This makes it particularly challenging for a person, who in addition to being vision impaired, has a memory or cognitive impairment. Part of the problem is due to lack of awareness by industry, limited consolidation and collaboration between manufacturers, a highly competitive market, and rapid rates of technological development.

Most home electronics standards tend only to apply to protocols for device inter-connection, media formats and other non-user interface domains, if indeed they conform to any industry standards at all. Unlike technology developed for business, government and industry, there is no consolidated pressure for conformance or interconnectivity, or accessibility with regard to consumer electronics. There is currently little awareness by industry of the need for accessible design in mainstream products, and the problems that poor design creates for people with disabilities and for older people.

This section briefly discusses some classical and contemporary design methodologies that either restrict or could have the potential to lead to the increase of accessibility and usability of products. It then explores some current design trends that have some promise for the future. Very occasionally, we see examples of incidental or accidental product designs which are well suited to some groups of people with disabilities.

Incidental access tends to occur at later iterations in the product development life cycle. It tends to happen as a positive side-effect of product refinement where more emphasis is placed on simple and elegant designs which diminish complexity and omit unnecessary actions for the user.

An example is a pod-based coffee maker, which, as it happens, is very easy and reliable for use by people who are blind or who have low vision. If you put it together the correct way, and place the cup in the correct position, you reliably get a hot cup of coffee. Vision Australia was contacted by two manufacturers of such automatic coffee makers, who now offer free delivery for vision-impaired purchasers.

Another example is a digital radio scanner, which though definitely not a consumer product, has interesting accessibility features. Firstly, it has a speech synthesizer that will announce the current frequency during scanning operations, as well as when a button is pressed. Secondly, it has a serial communications port allowing the radio to be controlled and programmed from a computer. The computer control includes all of the configuration settings as well as frequency, mode etc. These features are found in the Icom IC-R communications receiver, aimed squarely at the government, commercial and radio enthusiast end of the market.

The increasingly popular Roomba robot Vacuum Cleaner available in the US, is another example where the innovative design of the product has benefits for people with disabilities.

In the Trace Center published an extensive document examining consumer electronics accessibility. Accessible Design does not need to be separate from standard mass market design, but all too often manufacturers and the general population think of the two as mutually exclusive. Thus Accessible Design is a subset of what is termed Universal Design. Where Universal Design covers the design of products for all people and encompasses all design principles, Accessible Design focuses on principles that extend the standard design process to those people with some type of performance limitation.

According to Trace, Accessible Design is a balancing act. To begin with, we must acknowledge that it is not possible to design everything so it can be used by everyone.

There will always be someone with a combination of severe physical, sensory and cognitive impairments who will be unable to use it. Also, it is equally unreasonable to rely on the existence or development of special designs for each major product to accommodate each one of the vast variety of disabilities and combinations of disabilities. This makes it necessary to look toward a combination of approaches for meeting the needs of people with disabilities, ranging from the incorporation of features into products that will make them directly usable "from the box" by more people with disabilities to the inclusion of features that make them easier to modify for accessibility.

In the words of James Mueller of J. Mueller, Inc. He goes on to say that Universal Design is a goal that can be approached creatively from many directions. The designed world doesn't fit anyone perfectly all the time - not even the mythical person of "average" age and ability. At some time during our lives, we all have problems with the spaces where we live or work, or the products we use.

Age, illness, or accidents can make these problems more difficult. Universal Design is the practice of considering these factors in designing as inclusively and equitably as possible - for people of any age or ability. The concept of Universal Design UD is gaining significant coverage and application in different domains, particularly in the built environment.

The homepage and conference proceedings are available online. A well documented application of UD principles is the story of the OXO Good Grips range , which was developed for people with arthritis or limited motor skills. This development turned OXO around from a failing company to one of the largest makers of kitchen utilities today:.

Research by a range of universities is looking into ways of ensuring UD is applicable in business, and to translate its concepts into processes which can be implemented and measured. Chris Law, who has been working in the area of technology access for over a decade, is examining business decision-making in Universal Design, for his ongoing PhD project at RMIT University. In broad terms, user-centred design UCD is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.

User-centred design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyse and foresee how users are likely to use an interface, but to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of an interface to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like.

The chief difference from other interface design philosophies is that user-centred design tries to optimise the user interface around how people can, want, or need to work, rather than forcing the users to change how they work to accommodate the system or function. An increasingly common design approach is to create several personas — different representative users who are likely to use the product.

Usage scenarios are then created for those personas, to test the features and convenience of the product. Cooperative design involves designers and users on an equal footing based on the Scandinavian tradition of design of IT artefacts since Participatory design PD is a North American term for the same concept inspired by Cooperative Design, focused on participation of users since UI: Open door, slide out racks, Place items in racks, add dishwashing product, set washing mode with buttons or touch pad, and look at lights or display to confirm settings, close door.

With the development of computers, the term user interface has become the common term for the approach that a user needs to adopt to interact with and control the computer. The user interface provides means of:. Building on this principle of separating function and user interface is the URC project described in the section below. Another divide which continues is what the author terms the Disability Dichotomy.

In simple terms the disability dichotomy is the distinction between designs for people everyone who appears not to have disabilities and designs specifically for people with disabilities. While on one hand we have Universal Design, on the other we have Assistive or Adaptive technologies and designs. These are products and software specifically developed for people with disabilities niche markets for development, sale and use by people with disabilities.

It is indeed true that there are occasions where special designs, assistive technologies and products have their place for people with disabilities to participate more fully in employment, study and the information society.

So the challenge is to promote people with disabilities from being a special and different group, to being considered equal consumers in the general market place. It is not appropriate, nor is it the case, that special whitegoods be developed for use by people with disabilities. Economies of scale, and the range of brands and features of such devices makes such an approach impractical and uneconomic, and such an approach would be of no help for people, when travelling or staying with friends.

For these types of products, there is a desperate need for designers to take into greater account the wide range of people, capabilities, limitations and situations in which whitegoods will be used. This would involve devising better and more flexible user interface designs and incorporating other ways of providing feedback to a wider range of users such as audio or speech output , as well as ergonomic considerations, such as the amount of force effort required to physically use the products.

Accessible design, as described in the Trace Consumer Electronics guidelines, starts to tease out where generally good design might leave off, and where accessible design, and extensibility, can play a role. In economics, consumerism refers to economic policies that place emphasis on consumption.

In an abstract sense, it is the belief that the free choice of consumers should dictate the economic structure of a society cf. Producerism, especially in the British sense of term. This more modern conceptualization is based on the writings of sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen who lived at the turn of the 20 th century.

Consumerism today is an international phenomenon. People purchasing goods and consuming materials in excess of their basic needs is as old as the first civilizations e. Ancient Egypt, Babylon and Ancient Rome. The seeds of modern day consumerism grew out of the Industrial Revolution. In the nineteenth century, capitalist development and the industrial revolution were primarily focused on the capital goods sector and industrial infrastructure.

For example, after observing the assembly lines in the meat packing industry, Frederick Winslow Taylor brought his theory of scientific management to the organization of the assembly line in other industries; this unleashed incredible productivity gains and reduced the costs of all commodities produced on assembly lines.

Henry Ford and other leaders of industry understood that mass production presupposed mass consumption. In the agrarian economy, the working classes labored long hours and had little time for consumption. While previously the norm had been the scarcity of resources, the Industrial Revolution created a new economic situation. After the Industrial Revolution, products were available in outstanding quantities, at low prices, being thus available to virtually everyone.

Access to credit, in the form of installment payments aided further consumption. Beginning in the s, the reason most frequently given for attending college had changed. Making a lot of money outranked previous reasons such as becoming an authority in a field or helping others in difficulty.

This rationale correlates with the rise of materialism, specifically the technological aspect: the increasing prevalence of mp3 players, digital media, tablets and smartphones. Businesses have realized that wealthy consumers are the most attractive targets of marketing. Consequently, upper class tastes, lifestyles, and preferences trickle down to become the standard for all consumers. A consumer can have the instant gratification of purchasing an expensive item to improve social status. Emulation is also a core component of 21 st century consumerism.

As a general trend, regular consumers seek to emulate those who are above them in the social hierarchy. The poor strive to imitate the wealthy and the wealthy imitate celebrities and other icons. The celebrity endorsement of products can be seen as evidence of the evocation of the desire of modern consumers to purchase products partly or solely to emulate people of higher social status.

This purchasing behavior may co-exist in the mind of a consumer with an image of oneself as being an individualist. The rise in popularity of ethical consumerism over the last two decades can be linked to the rise of the Corporate Social Responsibility CSR movement. As global population increases, so does the pressure intensify on limited natural resources required to meet rising consumer demand.

Industrialization of developing countries, facilitated by technology and globalization is further straining these resources. Consumers are becoming more and more aware of the environmental and social implications of their day-to-day consumer decisions and are therefore beginning to make purchasing decisions based on environmental and ethical implications.

However, the practice of ethical consumerism is in its nascent stages and far from universal. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Business Ethics and Social Responsibility.

Search for:. Consumer Rights. Basic Consumer Rights Basic consumer rights ensure a level of protection for consumers owed by a supplier of goods or services. Kennedy established four basic rights; the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose, and the right to be heard.

In , the United Nations added four more rights to protect consumers: the right to satisfaction of basic needs, the right to redress, the right to consumer education, and the right to a healthy environment. Consumer protection consists of laws and organizations designed to ensure the rights of consumers, as listed above. In , the United Nations in added four more rights to protect consumers: the right to satisfaction of basic need, the right to redress, the right to consumer education, and the right to a healthy environment.

Consumer protection is the duty of the laws, government agencies, and organizations created to ensure consumer rights. Competitive markets also promote the interests of consumers under the principle of economic efficiency.