IAUD Award 2010 Grand Award (one winner)

IAUD Award 2010 Excellence Award (three winners)

The Award Ceremony

The award ceremony for the IAUD Award 2010 was held on Day 3 of the 3rd International Conference for Universal Design in Hamamatsu 2010 (November 1). The winner of the Grand Award was announced, and IAUD President Takuma Yamamoto conferred the testimonials.

Grand Award: Japan International Cooperation Agency(JICA), National Council on Disability Affairs(NCDA), Philippines	Excellence Award: NTT DoCoMo, Inc.
Excellence Award: Nonprofit Organization Town Guidance Support Network	Excellence Award: NIKKEN SEKKEI LTD.

Comments by the Selection Committee Chairman

Following the conferment of the testimonials, Professor Roger Coleman, Chairman of the IAUD Award Selection Committee, provided comments on the IAUD Award 2010.

As a jury we had a hard task. The standard was very high. Entries ranged from individual projects to company-wide programmes undertaken by major corporations, and from design-research and education groups to user-led initiatives delivering real change responding to local conditions. We were particularly impressed by the progress made on so many fronts - from graphic and signage design to customer service, and from international initiatives to very local projects. From an initial selection of ten outstanding entries we arrived at a short list of six and a final set of four award winners.

Choosing the overall winner was a further challenge, and a difficult one. The design quality of the case study entered by Nikken Sekkei Ltd. was outstanding. The dissemination of Universal Design thinking and practice within a very large professional group is likely to prove extremely influential. And the focus on lighting and acoustics marks this design out as genuinely holistic. We hope that this forward-looking project is the beginning of a wider dissemination of UD theory and practice outside the company.

The entry from NTT DoCoMo clearly demonstrates an established process of continuous design improvement within a world-leading company. This process delivers special features that include specific groups of users and others that offer benefits to all. The jury was particularly impressed with the strong focus on inclusive customer service through the design and staffing of sales outlets. These outlets will provide best-practice examples on high streets across Japan, effectively raising the bar in store design and inclusive customer service. In this regard NTT DoCoMo is outstanding in relation to its international peers in the industry, in that it is committed to the value of what we might call 'high touch' in telecommunications when its peers are going in the other direction and reducing customer contact to a minimum.

The Town Guidance Support Network has identified a crucial gap in transport provision: the lack of appropriate and integrated information to enable users of all ages and abilities to seamlessly navigate between transport systems and different operators. Well-researched design solutions have been proposed and implemented with a wide range of service operators and facility managers. The jury saw this entry as genuinely universal with real potential for much widerscale application. Importantly too, it was bottom-up and user driven. The knowledge and applications developed by the Town Guidance Support Network could be readily transferred to other countries offering real opportunities to significantly increase the use of public transport.

We had a very hard job choosing between this fine example of selfempowerment and the overall winning entry from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The JICA entry was at first sight more focussed on barrier-free access and wheelchair users than the other entries and not therefore strictly-speaking Universal Design.

However, in developed areas like the United States and Europe, early initiatives were in barrier-free design and the progress to Universal Design has taken some time. In our view this is the level at which work has to start in rural areas and in countries like the Philippines and so in this case the barrier-free focus was not seen as a drawback. On the contrary, what particularly impressed us case was the process of knowledge transfer from the 'haves' to the 'have-nots'. In that sense it is a world-class demonstration project at the level of international collaboration in the promotion of disability rights and unique among the Award entries in addressing the pressing need for accessibility in poorer rural areas. Most importantly it does so by promoting equity and empowering users to speak, think and campaign for themselves.

The promotion of equity is a central concept and driver for Universal Design, and through this hands-on project Japan is clearly leading the way in tackling the sort of issues that were raised many times yesterday and on Sunday. As an exemplar of how UD can successfully address majority world issues and concerns by transferring the knowledge that enables people to help themselves, the Jury thought this entry a worthy winner of the Grand Award. Having said that I must add, and conclude by saying that our decisions were not in the least easy because the standard of entries was uniformly high. So while we congratulate the Grand Award winners we should also congratulate the other entries on collectively raising the bar and demonstrating the reach and stretch of Universal Design and its capacity for changing peoples' lives for the better.

Presentations by the winners

After the award ceremony, the winners gave presentations on their respective topics.

Excellence Award: Promotion of "DOCOMO Hearty Style"	Excellence Award: Building a System Model that Offers Mobility Assistance Information to Support Users of Public Transportation
Excellence Award: Experience Universal Design with Five Senses —Developing Architectural Space Experiment Conducted at South Alps Health & Welfare Center—	Grand Award: The Creation of a Non-Handicapping Environment(NHE) for Persons with Disabilities(PWDs) in Rural Arias in the Philippines