# WUAD (Wheelchair User Assisted Design): A VR-Based Strategy to Make Buildings More Accessible
## 1 Introduction  
Recently, the complexity and fragmentation of the building design process have considerably grown, mainly driven by increasing specialization and tightening of regulations. This fact has led to a significant increase in the availability of design support tools intended to facilitate aspects of the design process. In the phases that comprise the design of a building, a series of standards must be met. Urban infrastructure and services are generally designed based on people without impairments, and the specific needs of people with disabilities are often not taken into account in the development of cities, public places, buildings and services [1]. Designers are usually trained to design for a theoretical \"average\" person who does not exist. Universal design was born with the purpose of designing products or environments that suit a broad range of users, including children, older adults, people with disabilities, people of atypical size or shape, people who are ill or injured, and people inconvenienced by circumstances. In architecture, universal design means creating spaces so they can be accessed, understood, and used to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of their age, size, ability, or disability. From the arrangement of the rooms to the choice of colours, many details go into the creation of accessible spaces [2]. Universal design is about looking at the project from the perspective of the end-user and involving them in the design process. This was the aim of the system presented in this paper: incorporating into the design process a type of user that is not always considered when designing buildings. When considering a wheelchair user, an element designed in compliance with all current regulations may not be the optimal solution or may not even be usable. Forexample, a straight access ramp with a compliant slope may reach a certain height, which may cause anxiety for some users if a handrail has not been included. As the inclusion of people with disabilities has been fostered in many areas (General Assembly, United Nations, 2006), advanced societies have introduced regulations and laws that facilitate the transit of wheelchair users in urban areas and buildings. This has led to a surge in the development and use of wheelchair simulators. Numerous proposals have been successfully deployed over the last years with different technological supports (movement platforms, haptic devices, displays, etc.) to fulfil different objectives, as is discussed in the next section. In recent years, virtual reality (VR) technology has been increasingly recognized by the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry for its capacity to offer multisensory 3D environments that immerse the user in a virtual world. This proposal brought together the ideas of universal design, the developments achieved by wheelchair simulators, and the challenges posed by virtual reality (VR) for the built environment. Specifically, a systematic procedure was presented for the evaluation of accessibility for wheelchair users in the architectural design phase and, subsequently, in the interior design phase of a building. A method for the implementation of this procedure using a virtual reality system was proposed. In the VR system, a wheelchair simulator was used that differs from any proposal made to date. The main differences were: it did not use a power wheelchair, so it was supposed to be suitable for a wider range of users; it had active haptic rollers that act on the wheels of the chair and allow simulating different types of terrain; and the wheelchair was mounted on a six degrees of freedom platform, while the proposals made so far use platforms with a maximum of four degrees of freedom. The remainder of the document is organized as follows: A review of previous works is in the next section.