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This is true in other fields too. Wheel-chair ramps are used by people with baby strollers. Subtitles work for deaf people, those who can't understand the spoke

This is true in other fields too. Wheel-chair ramps are used by people with baby strollers. Subtitles work for deaf people, those who can't understand the spoken language, or simple folks in situations where someone is sleeping next to them. Pretty much every accessibility-oriented feature ends up helping out people beyond the original audience.

sdeframond 18d ago
Baby strollers are not accounted for enough ! One might wonder (wrongly) why everyone should care about the special and expensive needs of a few (or old) people when designing public spaces. But a majority will actually need to use these spaces with a baby stroller. Not a few. Baby strollers are a driving power of our society! Enable them!
- tonyarkles 18d ago
  And to keep the loop going, stroller-accessible spaces are also walker-accessible spaces and cart-accessible spaces. Worked at a computer store in the early 00s. Our rented retail space had a wheelchair ramp and there were a few elderly regulars who would show up with a desktop PC in the basket of their rolling walkers for repairs. More than once they thanked us for having the ramp because the computer itself was way too heavy for them to carry from the parking lot.
- apothegm 18d ago
  Not to mention luggage. I find it hard to believe that it’s a coincidence that rolling luggage became common shortly after curb cuts and wheelchair ramps did.
  - mhb 18d ago
    Really? Both strollers and wheels on luggage are pretty nice to have even if you have to somehow negotiate curbs. So, I think it is a coincidence.
    - apothegm 17d ago
      And yet strollers predate rolling luggage by over a century. (Even 2.5 centuries depending on which sources you trust.)
      - mhb 17d ago
        The rolling luggage is primarily useful in the vicinity of airports. Inside airports there were no curbs. And I don't think people are going on long journeys through downtown areas with their luggage. I think you have a better argument asserting that rolling bags were facilitated by cheap polyurethane skate wheels.
        apothegm 16d ago
        There were fewer ramps and more stairs in airports and their parking garages prior to the 90s, due to the ACA. And people drag luggage around on city streets all the time. Many tourist destinations are pedestrian cities even outside their most central downtown areas. And luggage also needs to be dragged around hotels — and in suburban areas their absurdly large parking lots. The skate wheels are a plausible argument, though.
  - account42 15d ago
    Those are even worse because the tiny wheels do not take well to cobblestone or gravel surfaces that strollers handle just fine.
- my-huge-pony 18d ago
  In fact, in a way, basically everyone will use a baby stroller at some point in their life (at least as a passenger). I personally never noticed this before becoming a parent, but there's a lot of spaces that are "almost" stroller friendly, but for some reason there is a small obstacle that would not be expensive to remove (if accounted for during planning). For example, a few steps that could easily be a ramp, blocks of flats with a lift that is accessible after ascending a few steps, even high shop entrances. For me it's not a problem, because I can easily carry stroller with a baby inside up, but for most mothers I know this is usually a huge or unsurmountable obstacle.
tobyjsullivan 18d ago
I saw a good mental model for this a while ago. Unfortunately I have no idea where. Three kinds of disability: 1. Permanent (eg, blind) 2. Temporary (eg, pregnant/new parent, recoverable injury) 3. Contextual (eg, holding something with one hand, loud environment) When people think about accessibility, they often think about 1. But the long-tails for 2 and 3 are huge, and ultimately affect everyone at some point.
1718627440 17d ago
In traffic planning everyone who is not a healthy, athletic, young man without baggage is considered disabled.
account42 15d ago
While this is often true, sometimes accessibility features can be distracting to those who don't need them so should be implemented in a way that they are optional. For example, closed captions intended those who can't hear at all contain much more than spoken lines and are not appropriate for learning the (spoken) language and even less so when watching something in your native language with a good audio environment. Which is why subtitles are not on by default and you have different tracks for closed captions and regular subtitles.

sdeframond 18d ago

Baby strollers are not accounted for enough ! One might wonder (wrongly) why everyone should care about the special and expensive needs of a few (or old) people when designing public spaces. But a majority will actually need to use these spaces with a baby stroller. Not a few. Baby strollers are a driving power of our society! Enable them!

tonyarkles 18d ago
And to keep the loop going, stroller-accessible spaces are also walker-accessible spaces and cart-accessible spaces. Worked at a computer store in the early 00s. Our rented retail space had a wheelchair ramp and there were a few elderly regulars who would show up with a desktop PC in the basket of their rolling walkers for repairs. More than once they thanked us for having the ramp because the computer itself was way too heavy for them to carry from the parking lot.
apothegm 18d ago
Not to mention luggage. I find it hard to believe that it’s a coincidence that rolling luggage became common shortly after curb cuts and wheelchair ramps did.
- mhb 18d ago
  Really? Both strollers and wheels on luggage are pretty nice to have even if you have to somehow negotiate curbs. So, I think it is a coincidence.
  - apothegm 17d ago
    And yet strollers predate rolling luggage by over a century. (Even 2.5 centuries depending on which sources you trust.)
    - mhb 17d ago
      The rolling luggage is primarily useful in the vicinity of airports. Inside airports there were no curbs. And I don't think people are going on long journeys through downtown areas with their luggage. I think you have a better argument asserting that rolling bags were facilitated by cheap polyurethane skate wheels.
      - apothegm 16d ago
        There were fewer ramps and more stairs in airports and their parking garages prior to the 90s, due to the ACA. And people drag luggage around on city streets all the time. Many tourist destinations are pedestrian cities even outside their most central downtown areas. And luggage also needs to be dragged around hotels — and in suburban areas their absurdly large parking lots. The skate wheels are a plausible argument, though.
- account42 15d ago
  Those are even worse because the tiny wheels do not take well to cobblestone or gravel surfaces that strollers handle just fine.
my-huge-pony 18d ago
In fact, in a way, basically everyone will use a baby stroller at some point in their life (at least as a passenger). I personally never noticed this before becoming a parent, but there's a lot of spaces that are "almost" stroller friendly, but for some reason there is a small obstacle that would not be expensive to remove (if accounted for during planning). For example, a few steps that could easily be a ramp, blocks of flats with a lift that is accessible after ascending a few steps, even high shop entrances. For me it's not a problem, because I can easily carry stroller with a baby inside up, but for most mothers I know this is usually a huge or unsurmountable obstacle.

tobyjsullivan 18d ago

I saw a good mental model for this a while ago. Unfortunately I have no idea where. Three kinds of disability: 1. Permanent (eg, blind) 2. Temporary (eg, pregnant/new parent, recoverable injury) 3. Contextual (eg, holding something with one hand, loud environment) When people think about accessibility, they often think about 1. But the long-tails for 2 and 3 are huge, and ultimately affect everyone at some point.

1718627440 17d ago

In traffic planning everyone who is not a healthy, athletic, young man without baggage is considered disabled.

account42 15d ago

While this is often true, sometimes accessibility features can be distracting to those who don't need them so should be implemented in a way that they are optional. For example, closed captions intended those who can't hear at all contain much more than spoken lines and are not appropriate for learning the (spoken) language and even less so when watching something in your native language with a good audio environment. Which is why subtitles are not on by default and you have different tracks for closed captions and regular subtitles.