When we design for disabilities, we make things better for everyone.

@oldherl this is next level evil

@coreworlder yeah, I know

@koneko interesting solution indeed. I guess this would have been harder to put in place in the 70s when the term was created, since those were created by activists, who were illegally destroying the pavement to make it more accessible. But yeah, it's a good example of "if we think accessibility upfront we can do amazing things for everyone, if we retrofit we kind of do the minimum viable thing".

@raphaelmorgan @shininghero same here the ones I saw were not created for accessibility but more like "this road is dangerous we needs cars to slow down so let's raise some speed bumps that will also act as crosswalk areas for pedestrians".
Still, they do the job

@koneko @stephaniewalter in some countries there is a 3th version with pedestrians and bikes separated.

@stephaniewalter

They are great if placed properly.
Both routes from my home to the town centre include a stretch of narrow pavement with a steep dropped kerb (curb cut in American?).
There is no level section on one, on the other it's about 15cm wide.
No safe way to drive across it, or to turn onto it to cross the road.
They could have put the crossings at wider stretch of pavement.

There is one alternative, driving a longer route that includes pavements in a light industrial area with very steep kerbs, no dropped kerbs, and vans or lorries parked everywhere. I'd have to drive my 4mph chair in the middle of the road.

#NotAccessible

@stephaniewalter Here in Berlin, the local trash pickup service puts ramps onto streets so they can roll the trash containers easily downstairs, and they put signs onto those saying they're primarily for trash but should of course also be used by wheelchair users and strollers, and I find that beautiful.

@Skulldog@socel.net @stephaniewalter@front-end.social accessibility infrastructure is not wasted, not because of the benefit it provides to anyone else, but because it makes things accessible for people who need it.

@stephaniewalter Or the existence of text messages. When mobile phones (cell phones) were first coming into use in the late 80s and early 90s, they were intended for voice calls only. The Deaf community advocate hard for adding text messages to the standards by default. The companies weren't keen, but eventually it was done. And I think we can agree that text messaging turned out to be kind of important to the vast majority of people!

@coreworlder @stephaniewalter Who knew viking warriors has such heavy accents!

@coreworlder @stephaniewalter the Museum of Science Boston did some really cool work on universal design, but I can't find much about it now.

@stephaniewalter

Thanks for sharing this. Learning from it and sharing. Slowly learning about disABILITY MUNDUS and this seems to be one manifestation of the principle.

@stephaniewalter in my case: parents who don’t want to wake up their young kids because the TV was too loud

@listrophy same here sometimes, making the sound super low to not wake up people in the house

@coreworlder @stephaniewalter
Microsoft likes to claim pieces of the public domain as private property. The first I noticed was the ".doc" file extension as an indication of the file belonging to their proprietary word processor, although it already had an established use in the industry. I hope whoever is making up these drawings is getting paid by Microsoft, and I hope that their chain of command believes that it is a wise business decision to do so. I sincerely hope that nobody else imagines that they will be intelligible to the generic human being. #Microsoft #monopoly #capitalism

@stephaniewalter or really: keeping the TV quiet, so if one kid starts yelling for help (ugh, sure... I'll fix your blanket), I can hear them before they wake up the other kids

@johnpettigrew @stephaniewalter One thing that can get quite annoying: people that insist in commenting that people cannot talk via e.g. IRC or IM just because they're in the same room or next to each other.

Best case, it may be helping with organization or workflow, or with keeping distractions low. But it can also be preferrable for accessibility.

@anemone @stephaniewalter whatever you do often also has some drawbacks, it's not always a one-way street.
Dropped curbs also tilt the pavement (US: sidewalk) near the drop so walking or rolling a buggy along them becomes more difficult, likewise for cyclists if they are shared.
Raised paths across roads create hazards (like speed bumps, sleeping policemen, except they extend to the curb) for vehicles, but in particular for cyclists using the road.

@anemone @stephaniewalter There's also the problem of keeping the non-road sections level (e.g. sidewalk).

If there is insistence in keeping sidewalks raised compared to the rest of the road, what are the best practices to implement this without imposing cant on the sidewalk? Just that (raising the crosswalk part of the road), or are there other ways? (I guess one could also just lower the whole sidewalk, instead of just the edge near the crosswalk?)

(Cc:ing @drtcombs in case she is interested?)

@stephaniewalter I feel like the migration of things to video is one of those examples of things where capitalism has been damaging accessibility:
- Video is less portable, the file-sizes are larger, the algorithms -> I don’t think I know of anyone that has re-homed their published videos.
- Video is more painful for the consumer to adapt for accessibility.
- Video is harder to ad-block / skip-the-ads
- It’s harder to tell if video is BS or too shallow (platform & low-quality sources love this)