Enhancing Human Diversities Through the Design for All Approach: Potentialities and Relevant Issues for Emerging Countries

For many years the meaning of “diverse” was often intended in a negative sense; for example physical appearances, if not included in recognized proportions or capabilities, have often been tied to the concept of “disability” and, in general to the concept of “human diversity”. The meaning of human diversity concerns many aspect of everyday life, from physical ones, to social, cognitive and behavioral ones. Indeed, we perceive what is around us using our capabilities, but what is around us is often designed by designers unable to understand real people’s needs. In Design, the attention to the issue of human diversity has been recognized since the 50’s from earliest attempts of Barrier-Free Design Movement until the ones of Universal Design and Inclusive Design, new generations of designers have proposed enabling solutions more tolerant of diversified human capacity. The most recent design approach oriented toward a social consideration of end-users needs is Design for All (DfA), a new European approach based on the principles of Social Inclusion. DfA considers human diversities – all – as design strength in order to propose complete end enabling products for real end-users. The paper describes the DfA approach through a complete literature review on the theme of human diversity in design; it shows potentialities and criticalities of this theme and demonstrates how DfA can show human complexity in the project. Moreover, referring to developing countries, it considers the potentialities resulting from the adoption of a human-centered, inclusive-oriented and socially responsible design approach like this.