By Paul P. Hogan, Ireland, Designer and president of EIDD 1993-1996

The European Institute for Design and Disability was formally established on April 41993, in Dublin. However, its origins go back to some years before that. In the mid 1980s, a small group of members of the Society of Designers in Ireland (SDI), realised that they had received no training to equip them to tackle work in areas other than those conventionally addressed by design. Out of this insight came the realisation that they were not unique, but that this was a problem that affected design and designers everywhere.

With the intention of promoting their ideas on a wider stage, the SDI put forward a resolution to the 1987 World Design Congress in Amsterdam, to the effect that designers everywhere should factor considerations of disability and ageing into their work.

This was debated at international assemblies of industrial and graphic designers and interior architects, totally representing 50,000 designers world-wide. The idea was adopted unanimously.

Emboldened by this, the SDI moved on to organise the first European Conference on Design for Disability in Dublin in 1989 with the assistance of the European Commission. The conference was an outstanding success as designers, rehabilitation experts, medical personnel and people with disabilities came together to address practical design problems.

In due course, the Institute for Design and Disability (IDD) was for-med as a purely Irish organisation. An Expert Group Meeting was convened in Dublin in 1992 with support from the European Community’s HORIZON initiative.

The meeting concluded there was a need for a specialised European institution. The Expert Group reconvened the following April, again with the support of HORIZON, and over two days agreed to establish the EIDD with the following objectives:

• to promote interest in design as a response to disability.
• to undertake studies and provide information on the relationship between design and disability.
• to initiate design solutions to meet identified needs at both the national and European level.

Published in Crisp & Clear No. 1, April 2000