“A” for Effort

I’m getting kind of tired of seeing these pictures and videos of designs people have come up with to integrate ramps and stairs better. Yeah, it’s super important to find ways to make all buildings accessible to people who use wheelchairs, but I have yet to see one of these designs that isn’t enormously flawed.

Like this one that turns some stairs into a ramp….when you step on a lever. Hello? Is anyone paying attention here? You designed this so people who use wheelchairs could access a building more easily and then you made it so they wouldn’t be able to access the ramp at all? (Not to mention the angle of stairs is way too steep for a ramp)

And you’ve probably seen this video where a hidden lift comes out when needed. But all I can see when I watch it is that there’s no button to access the lift from the ground level. Someone in a wheelchair presses a doorbell and a non-disabled person comes out to activate the lift! Why does it depend on there being someone already in the building?

Back to the drawing board, all of you!

Use some common sense when you’re trying to come up with a solution to this problem. A person using a wheelchair needs to be able to navigate the world without a non-disabled person tagging along (even though it might be an interesting solution for all people with disabilities to get a non-disabled slave to follow them everywhere by a chain).