Despite planning to make their local areas accessible the bureaucrats, maintenance workers and builders of the world often end up making matters worse for less able people in their communities. Due to a lack of consulting disabled people during the design process, failing to carry out the work properly or just plain old fashioned stupidity, facilities which are supposedly designed to make disabled access easier sometimes do the opposite. Occasionally you come across an ‘accessible feature’ that just seems like a slap in the face of the people they’re meant to help.
The internet is teeming with examples of silly signage, ridiculous ramps and other accessibility mishaps. Here are ten extraordinary examples we’ve seen recently:
Step free access, or should that be three step access?
The inaccessible wheelchair ramp.
The least frequently occupied disabled parking space ever….
Might still be more popular than this ‘accessible’ toilet…
Something lost in translation? Or maybe someone actually lost their Chinese to English dictionary?
No idea what happens after this ramp due to the glare. But you can tell there’s a squeeze to get off the ramp anyway.
They may say that Paralympians are superhuman, but nobody in a wheelchair is a superhero.
So steep it’s almost vertical…
Get to the top of the ramp. Open the door. No space anymore for your wheelchair, roll back down. Repeat.
Can’t tell if this tiny bath is for people with less able legs or for giving people less able legs. Not so much a squeeze as a crush to get in and out of this…
The stupidity of the designers involved here is laughable, but it’s symptomatic of a common trend of disabled facilities which just aren’t of any use to less able people. It goes to show the need to consult the people you’re trying to make life easier for, in order to avoid building something ineffective. Nobody’s going to be grateful for a non-functioning facility.
Most of these are our favourites from Universal Design Style’s Bad Design blog. See more like this on their website.