The VERITAS project, which contributed to more accessible products, is coming to en end in December 2013
After four years of extensive and intensive research the VERITAS project terminates end of December 2013. Researching tools for inclusive product development, VERITAS addressed five different product domains including automotive, smart living, offices, infotainment/games, and personal health care. The technical core of the VERITAS outcome is an Open Simulation Platform. This platform allows to study the interaction of a virtual impaired user with virtual product models and to verify their accessibility early in the development process. The models included in the VERITAS solution take into account motor, perceptual and cognitive impairments. Even multiple conditions can be simulated. VERITAS user models were harmonized with those of other inclusion projects of the 7th Framework Programme, the VUMS project cluster. The result of the cluster work was a standardization proposal which was provided to standardization bodies and groups for implementation in standards on user models.
Besides numerical simulation with graphical representation of the results VERITAS supports virtual product experience by using virtual reality technology, such as haptic devices. Designers can thus experience their designs through the eyes of a user with cataracts or feel the problems of operating a gas hob with the tremor of a Parkinson patient.
VERITAS did not only propose and implement such tools. They were tested with designers from the various product domains. And they were also verified by comparing the simulation results with the experience of impaired users. This approach led to confirmed knowledge and confidence in VERITAS results.
But the project did not stop at that point. Thorough cost-benefit analyses and exploitation plans were carried out. And the practicability of VERITAS tools was for instance demonstrated by implementing visual impairments as a planning aid into an operational Virtual Reality based planning system for family homes.
Overall, VERITAS has proved that the implemented simulation and design experience methods are valuable and appropriate tools for designing better and more inclusive products.
These are good achievements. There is, however, still a way to go to implement an inclusive design culture in European industry. Further projects and endeavours are needed to convince stakeholders and to implement the tools in industrial processes.
AGE has been in charge of gathering the views of older people and persons with disabilities in the research carried out by the VERITAS project. The project results will be translated into policy recommendations and fed into AGE’s work on accessibility.
For more information you may visit the VERITAS website, read the online newsletters, or contact Nena Georgantzi, Legal and Research Officer.
