The design of artifacts and environments for people with disabilities has been frustrated by the lack of design oriented digital human models (DHM). This paper describes a process for the development of a functional visualization system (FVS) for the creation of DHM for use by designers and progress made in the development of the FVS. The system employs a 'synthetic' or 'human figure model' approach and includes standard measurement procedures for the capture of anthropometric data, the development of computer programs and processes for the visualization of the data which has been captured, the verification of collected data and the investigation of the utilization of visualization tools by designers and clinicians.