I was recently in a somewhat large city and was doing a bit of Street­Complete and it has a bunch of questions that try to figure how accessible a route is and I noticed how fucking bad it is. As it was a larger city there were at least those bumpers at traffic lights, which is not the norm everywhere in my experience, but that was about it. Sometimes the curb was lowered on one side so you could easily traverse it with a wheelchair etc. but it was only on one side of the road, the other side was at complete height (at least 15cm). This meant you might easily get on the road but head no way of properly getting of.

I had that experience as well, it also asks whether the traffic lights make a sound. I hear it all the time, never need it and never realised I might hear it all the time, I dont hear it at every crossing. Suddenly it felt so random whether or not it was doing the ticking or not.

That's one thing that struck me about the last time I was in the US. The cities are SO incredibly inaccessible. All the buildings need to be compliant, so once you make it through the door, you're fine, but getting there is basically impossible for people with disabilities.

No sidewalks, almost no public transportation and where it exists, it's impossible to get in or out. Cars can turn right on a red light in SO many places, so you can basically never know when you can safely cross what should be clear path.

Wheelchair ramps are for sick... BMX tricks

Where I am, there's a requirement for 15% (I believe) of new condo developments to meet accessibility standards. You wouldn't believe how people—potential buyers, not developers—are against that, saying it's too many. That's just new developments. All the existing old stock is not accessible, so that percentage of total accessible living spaces is, actually, still tiny. But it's still too much to accommodate accessibility.

Literally everyone is one accident, illness, or old age away from being disabled in some way. I can't believe how stupid and short-sighted people are. (Maybe that's their disability.)

I try to implement color-blind safe color palettes in my presentable work. Weird part is i started doing it after a color blind person was an ass to me for completely unrelated reasons.

Maybe I thought other color blind people are just humans and not represented by this guy.

I’ve recently been spending time somewhere that has street crossings that talk to you. Its annoying in a cute way to have a voice clearly say something to the effect of “the light to cross x street is lit, you may cross” (the annoying bit is that until it’s lit it says “wait” repeatedly)

I don't need it, but if I did that’s exactly the sort I’d want. Its so clear! Zero confusion! I didn't have to look up from my phone to cross the street!

Literally everyone is one accident, illness, or old age away from being disabled in some way.

yeah I was surprised to come across the statistic that in the UK about quarter of the population has some kind of disability (defined as "a physical or mental health condition or illness that has lasted or is expected to last 12 months or more, and which condition and/or illness reduces their ability to carry out day-to-day activities")

I kind of get it, in a tiny flat, making everything wheelchair accessible means objectively worse space usage for a non disabled person.

Solution is to just not buy it if you don't like it though.

The non ticky/beepy ones should have a tactile knob on the bottom of the box that spins when it's safe to cross.

You still should check! Lots of idiots out there.

Had this the other day with my NAS!

Just for fun I tried the "locate disc" function, which supposedly changes the colour of the LED of the tray of the specific disc.

Only after manually finding the correct tray and starring at the LED for a couple of seconds I could see that it was slightly oranger compared to the others. I think.

Some did, but most of the ones that had no sound had no tactile thing either. I expect the bussier center to have better coverage of accessible traffic lights, the experience I had was in a low traffic area on the outskirts of that town.

This is why, if I want to upload an image that needs a circle drawing attention to some part of it, I use blue instead of red. Useless red circles become even more useless when someone struggles to see red, but the most common forms of color-blindness show a distinction for blue.

I have an app on my phone that simulates different types of color blindness (Chromatic Vision Simulator, or CVSimulator. Free, no ads, it just does the thing it's designed to do.) Sometimes I use it to make art that can be accessible for people without a full range of color perception, or to make something that is designed specifically for them. Sometimes such limitations encourage creativity, and if it means more people can enjoy a piece, I'm all for it.

Microblogmemes, whilst this post is inciteful, it didn't belong in this community

I do hate the blinkinlights for that reason. Green? k. Amber? Not quite the same as green... is there a green nearby to compare? Orange? Different than amber, maybe? Red. K definitely not green.

Right on red could be OKish if majority of drivers followed even a fraction of road laws and made even a half attempt at stopping first, before looking, then finally starting the turn from a complete stop.

Could be, but won't.

Lifts in train stations and other public infra. I don't need them right now but I know they are so essential for lots of different people.

Interesting, what is the app called?

Don’t use color, use different line types. Hatching, cross hatching, zig zag, dotted line, dashed line.

I sometimes go around with a pram. Prams you can lift up and down stairs if needed, but you’d rather avoid it. It’s a quick and painless way to become more mindful of the accessibility of the environment around you.

I am also staunchly against “anti-homeless” architecture. People might need to lay down! Let them. And set up programs against homelessness, not against homeless people.

Great advice! That sounds like a fun way to add character to an art piece too.

In my city in Canada you need to hold the crossing button for like a second or two and then it'll do the noise. Maybe that's why it seems random? I know its easy to do by mistake

Its name is Chromatic Vision Simulator, or “CVSimulator.”

On a related note, I want to plug an app that I have had installed on my phones for a few years called Be My Eyes. People with reduced/no vision use it to ask for help from a sighted person. I recommend everyone install it to help out!

As a sighted user, my experience goes like this. I get a phone call that is simultaneously ringing to several helpers' devices. If I picked up first, I am connected to the helpee in a one-way video call. ^1^ I say hi, the helpee says hi, and they ask for help. I try to help them, and the helpee ends the call. It usually takes <5 min.

Here some of are the calls I've answered:

• A teacher wanted to sort "thank you" cards made by the students into piles by recipient.
• "Why did my washer not finish the cycle?" - I read the LEDs and knob positions to determine that it hadn't drained, and suggested settings to run a quick drain cycle.
• "What is my clothes dryer set to?" - I described the two knobs and listed their options in order, and confirmed their current settings.
• "Which vitamin bottle is which, and what is the dosage?" - I asked them to move the camera and bottles so I could read the labels.

^1^ If I don't pick up, it will keep ringing the other helpers until it finds someone. I assume there's some logic that picks helpers based on how often they have picked up, because once I finally answered a call in time, I started getting more.

I watched a movie where a blind girl used that to navigate around her house to escape a home invader. Didn't realize it was real

That's a good one, the ones with a tactile thing require a touch whereas others are a physical buttons. It could be true that these need to be pushed longer for a sound. But at the same time, some make a sound when the light was red too. I'm gonna try it when i come across one of those kind of buttons.

Playing games enough times with my RG colorblind friend, I am now livid when a game gives us color taska but doesn’t have a colorblind mode.

... am I a crazy person? Who actually stands in an elevator and thinks "the floor announcements sure do ruin my day" What is wrong with these people?

and the title of the post? wheelchair ramps were the problem? the fuck?

That's the world we live in. I'm confident if you gave some people $100 for free, they'd get mad it wasn't $200.

Where I am, there's a requirement for 15% (I believe) of new condo developments to meet accessibility standards. You wouldn't believe how people—potential buyers, not developers—are against that...

I'm against that!

It should be 100%. There's no excuse not to use universal design principles in every new building.

No sidewalks

There's been a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that resulted in a consent decree forcing local governments to put in ADA-compliant ramps at intersections. But the lawsuit apparently didn't also include the sidewalks themselves, so now there are useless "ADA ramps to nowhere" everywhere. It's fucking infuriating!

Fun fact: right turn on red came about in response to the oil crisis. It wasn't legal by default before that. My local streets advocacy group wants a city no right on red law, but I don't see how it'd happen in the current environment.

I was recently noticing how the newest wave of hostile architecture has changed as I walked around my city.

In the past couple of decades, anti-homeless architecture became so profoundly hostile that it was almost unusable even for its intended purpose.

Benches so sloped you couldn't sit on them at all. Spikes sticking out of everything. It became obvious to anyone that the whole purpose of the furniture was to be unusable, that it existed only through spite.

Everyone hated it.

And so the latest generation of hostile architecture has now "evolved". It's hostile but only subtly so, in a way where most people might not notice.

Things like trendy wooden slatting instead of anti-skate spikes. Benches that look and feel normal to sit on, but are intentionally just a little too short to lay down on.

We could fix homelessness, but instead an incredible amount of effort has been poured into refining and "perfecting" hostile architecture so it achieves the purpose of deterring homeless people, but in a subtle way that conceals its true purpose.

Out of sight, out of mind.

I only had one encounter with Be My Eyes of someone trying to classify their comic book collection by the year printed on the cover which was too small for them to read. It was pretty neat and I was happy to help, but it took way longer than 5 minutes, haha. I think though that with computer vision, a lot of the requests aren't routed to volunteers anymore though.

Fascinating! Do you recall the name?

I wasn't annoyed by them before, but I definitely found myself VERY appreciative of wheelchair accessible automatic doors when I broke my foot last year. I was on crutches, but still.

It was a weird new experience for me, being forced to not do something. Not because someone was stopping me, but because I physically couldn't do it. Simple stuff , like taking the trash with the stairs. Weird.

I had to do some searching, it's called "see for me" .

I was a CNA (for non-Americans, I was a trained nurse's assistant) for the first 8 years or so of my adulthood. I worked in long-term care facilities, mostly Alzheimer's and Dementia care units and psychiatric locked wards, but I worked in other wings too.

It was absolutely eye-opening. It was a rich, and at the same time immensely painful, experience for someone who had no disabilities and no firsthand experience with disabled family. I was proud to be a part of my patients' lives (even when they were assholes about it), because they taught me some of the hardest and most important lessons I ever learned about humankind.

End rant.

Or those puzzles that need to be solved through audio clues but closed captions aren't available. (Don't get me wrong subtitles are great but there is still a lot missing without cc - sadly most games don't have them but it should be the standard.)

The thing I never understand is disabled parking it places like Disneyland. Ok so it's closer to the park entrance, is that useful to people, does the distance magically not count once you're inside the compound?

I will mention this becomes quite messy sometimes. But simpler charts absolutely. Line thickness and lightness can also be used but a surprising amount of software has insufficient rendering capability for these.

Wdym? Surely reducing any travelling for people with mobility issues is a benefit, non?

Some people are just under immeasurably inhumans amount of stress, to the point that anything could trigger just an irrational seething hatred for some small, random noise, or inconvenience, or whatever.

We were not meant to operate under the conditions that a lot of us slave away at each and every day, due to survival, obligation, duty, and more.

We could fix homelessness, but instead an incredible amount of effort has been poured into refining and “perfecting” hostile architecture so it achieves the purpose of deterring homeless people, but in a subtle way that conceals its true purpose.

All the money spent on hostile anti-homeless shit could have solved homelessness 3 times over.

But that'll never happen in america, at least, because when it comes to punishing people.. there is no end of the money, but when it comes to helping people.. oh my god the pearl clutching and hand clasping that follows about money.

People move wheelchairs out of their way?! Jfc

Wow, that's just... sad and infuriating.

Yes a lot of software is absolute shit at support for the color blind or visually impaired. Even so called “508 compliant” applications are a joke. We validate our software where I work, and certify it to be 508 compliant since we have government customers. But it’s a complete joke. Just a formality and afterthought. Anyone actually trying to use it with accessibility tools would have a hell of a bad time. One reason I prefer Linux is the desktop and most apps tend to be a lot more configurable than other OSes. Which allows you more control over color and font size.

A dog taught me about crosswalk accessibility. I was walking someone's blind dog, and we were waiting at the crosswalk. When the opposite side of the street started chirping when the light changed (as it always does), the dog started crossing the street toward the source of the sound before I ever indicated it was time to move. I'd never thought much about the chirping sound until then.

I used to work for Comcast and one of my responsibilities was making sure their mobile apps passed their annual accessibility tests. The company faced enormous FCC fines for failure to pass these tests, but somehow the only person aware of this was me and I was only a contractor. Comcast has thousands of vice presidents of this and that, and one of them should have been on top of this stuff, but their turnover rate was so high that they never usually even lasted a year in one position, so it was up to me to explain the situation to each new one and try to convince them that it was even important.

You wouldn't think that a person at that level would ever say "who cares about blind people?" but they almost all said that or something to that effect, until the reality of a million-dollars-per-month fine set in. They even at one point hired a vice president of accessibility -- a man who was himself blind and obviously never said "who cares about blind people?" -- but he quit after less than a year because of his frustration with getting the company to give a shit.