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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Don’t use color, use different line types. Hatching, cross hatching, zig zag, dotted line, dashed line.
Great advice! That sounds like a fun way to add character to an art piece too.
Interesting, what is the app called?
Its name is Chromatic Vision Simulator, or “CVSimulator.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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! :p
You still should check! Lots of idiots out there.
The non ticky/beepy ones should have a tactile knob on the bottom of the box that spins when it’s safe to cross.
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.
Microblogmemes, whilst this post is inciteful, it didn’t belong in this community
Wheelchair ramps are for sick… BMX tricks
