The Principles of Universal Design

Hannah: This is one of my projects. In the late 1970s, when computers first started to invade the office, keyboards were ponderous monsters. Some were three inches thick, which when placed on a 30-inch high desk surface were basically unusable. A lot of attempts were made to make the keyboard more accessible, from drawers to movable desk surfaces. All of them kind of worked. Coincidentally, we were designing a dental chair and accessories. The dentist work table and arm was just sitting there in the studio waiting to be attached to the underside of the desk. That's what we did. We just mounted the dental arm and tray to the desk and the Keyboard Support was born. The design came out of what was probably just a lucky coincidence, but the keyboard user sure lucked out that day, too.