We love to see accessibility features find uses outside their original intent.
Generally we only refer to someone with a permanent disability as “disabled” but in reality we are all disabled in various categories at different times of our lives. Accessibility is important to all three groups (you need to be able to use your phone with one hand), therefore accessibility is important to everyone.
Honestly, what's the difference between a wheelchair and prescription glasses? Both are medical devices prescribed be a healthcare professional to assist with a physical impairment.
Taking the silly question seriously for a moment: the difference is that with prescription glasses, you can function just exactly like someone who doesn't need them. Once you are wearing the glasses, your ability to do pretty much anything is unimpaired. Whereas a wheelchair restores some mobility, but does not, for example, impart the ability to climb stairs. It does not give you back all the mobility of someone who doesn't need one.
The more recent WHO's Global report on health equity suggests 16%, as populations age: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240063600
The CDC considers this closer to 30%: https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-health/articles-documents...
This number is generally considered to be rising for a few reasons. Aging population, wars resulting in higher injuries but fewer deaths, the number of people who are able to survive disease (rather than historically just dying.
You might find the Washington Group's definition, which applies a spectrum, and estimates an approximately 6-12% rate of disability. https://www.washingtongroup-disability.com/wg-blog/post/diff...
> I doubt the number would get anywhere close to 15% if the definition only included the kinds of disabilities that are immediately obvious to anyone looking.
Thank god that's not the definition. Deafness/significant hearing impairment isn't immediately visible, and that's estimated at ~5%. Plenty of folks are low vision enough to need assistive technology (like a screenreader) even if they don't have a cane and may be able to navigate. Plenty of people with MS have great days where they can walk, and days where they cannot. There are people who lack the strength in their hands to dress themselves, yet they can go out and about just fine.
Your definition is too narrow. Plenty of people experience impassible barriers that are not visible. Happy to provide some additional educational resources for you if they would be helpful.
> Certainly it's not true that 15% of the people I see are in a wheelchair, on crutches, missing a limb, obviously blind (e.g. walking with a cane), and so on.
Are you in a wealthy area? Think globally, do you think your town has better or worse support than other parts of the world for people with disabilities? Do you think your region has better or worse regional conflicts or disease? Think globally.
Now, I think the assumed way to get in is to keep the door open with your body while simultaneously lifting the rollator over both thresholds. This requires considerable strength, as you have to reach far with a heavy weight. Maybe an athlete could do it. Not an old exhausted person.
An old person needs to first leave the rollator out, open the door and make it so it stays open with a hook. Involves crouching and working with your hands close to the ground. Then lift the rollator one by one over the steps and go inside. Then come back out and close the door.
A foot operated door stopper and a few slopes could probably ease that up tremendously.
Which itself is kind of an interesting example of how these things should work, because the curbs are maintained by the government, so the compliance cost is getting paid by the taxpayer.
Which is as it should be, because if something is to be required as a public benefit then it should be paid for out of public funds rather than as an unfunded mandate. Then thing like curb cuts continue to be a good deal so people are happy to fund them, whereas measures that cost more than they're worth get the level of opposition that they should because the taxpayer has to pay for them. And either way you would stop stressing smaller companies and causing market consolidation by increasing compliance costs.
The fact that compliance costs outprices some smaller companies rather shows that we as a society prefer to have accomodations, than live in one where such accomodations are only affordable to the affluent.
Not at all, it just happens that we're already doing the right thing in that case because it wasn't possible to stick the wrong party with the bill.
> The fact that compliance costs outprices some smaller companies rather shows that we as a society prefer to have accomodations, than live in one where such accomodations are only affordable to the affluent.
It isn't the consumers being priced out, it's the producers. Which in turn causes the market to consolidate so that only the affluent can afford the big company monopolist's product anyway, and everyone else not only doesn't get accommodations but can't even afford the product or service anymore. Housing is a solid example of this; unfunded mandates make construction significantly more expensive and now millions of people can't afford a home.
Whereas if the taxpayer had to fund everything the government mandates, the mandates would have to account for the cost directly rather than hiding it inside the price of everything else, allowing people to make better choices about which ones are worth what they cost.
I saw a sibling comment mentioning about the drop curbs making the path awkwardly angled. Yeah they can be a real pain. Pushing a pram along on an angled path is hell on the wrists. But a lot of the troublesome ones are the wider ones for people to get their cars up to their front door.
Makes you think about how hard just going down the road with a wheelchair is.
Try going for a run along a pavement with frequent curb cuts, it's not pleasant. UK dropped curbs are somewhat less of a trip hazard but are so frequent in towns that you end up running with an ankle at an angle.
My most unpleasant experience so far has been during my daily public heavy deadlifting routine. When I place my barbell on the edge of the curb, which my particular style of lifting requires, it's placed at an angle so my back got messed up and it's all the fault of these curb cutting measures.
It's all fine and dandy you want to assist children and handicapped people, but it'll be at the expense of regular users of the pavement which use it for completely sane and normal activities.
My conclusion, as always, is that U.S.-Americans and Brits do not walk. Otherwise these design choices do not make any sense.
Even if this is not the case for some weird reason - don't you agree that making the world a little bit more accessible for people who have a really hard time getting around is worth making the world just a tiny little bit less accessible for you - the person who can litterally run around?
If you have a considerable problem with tripping often though, maybe look at how you do running.
Just make sure you alternate which side of the road you are running on somewhat evenly so you are getting the benefit on both sides.
One "weird" complaint that I have with some accessibility features is that they mount things so that wheelchair users (and children) can operate them, e.g. a ATM mounted at groin height. I'm fairly tall so now I struggle to operate them or have to bend in unnatural angles. It's a small price to pay to make the world navigable to others, but almost daily I run into things that "are clearly designed by idiots". That is until I remember that the average person is below 180cm and right handed.