Why elevator buttons are wrong, and how that speaks volumes about what we value

Can we briefly talk about the humble elevator button? I know there could hardly be an apparently more insignificant design element, but the elevator button has become the bane of my existence.

A bit of background: I haven’t been blessed with great eyesight, and last month this condition temporarily worsened after a minor eye surgery. For a couple of weeks everything was blurry; Imagine seeing the world through a steamed-up bathroom mirror. Negotiating the physical environment, something that is usually taken for granted, became a constant challenge, and no element proved to be more consistently irritating than, yes, the elevator button.

The problem is that these buttons can be extremely difficult to read, especially in low-light elevators. Almost always I had to kneel down and use the flashlight application on my phone to illuminate the control panel. It’s a cumbersome, inconvenient, time-consuming exercise, and it’s not uncommon for an elevator to answer another call before the right button is even found.

If your eyesight is poor, I suppose you share this experience that has haunted the Dallasites since 1962, when America’s first passenger elevator was installed in the 11-story American Refining Building in what is now Thanks-Giving Square. (It was demolished in the 1980s to make way for the Energy Plaza.)

It’s a particularly frustrating predicament, not to mention the irony, since elevator button design is extensively governed by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These standards set the minimum button size (19 centimeters), the maximum height at which the tallest button can be placed (either 48 or 54 inches above the floor, depending on whether the button is on the front or the side of the cab attached). , the placement of Braille digits and a “visual cue” to indicate that a key has been activated.

However, these standards do not require that the digits of the keys be clearly visible, either by direct lighting or by backlighting. The situation could also be improved by requiring buttons or button panels to protrude at a slight angle so that they are inclined upwards in the direction of the eye instead of lying flush with the elevator car wall.

In some newer high-rise buildings, this problem is eliminated or at least reduced by what is known as “automatic destination disposition”, in which there are no call buttons in the elevator car. Instead, passengers are directed to an elevator in which their destination has either been preselected (by scanning an ID card) or entered outside the car. But such preprogrammed elevators have their own set of problems including confusion and increased passenger anxiety.

You are now thinking that my problem with the elevator buttons seems trivial, but I would argue that it suggests a broader truth: the designed world regularly fails to meet our needs, especially those of us who are physically at risk. And that is by no means trivial.

More than 26% of the American population is considered to be disabled in some way. It’s a number that will increase as a growing percentage of our population is older.

Like the artist and engineer Sara Hendren in What Can a Body Do? As we get to know the built world, “every day everyone is at odds with the physical environment”.

If you’ve stumbled upon a crumbling Dallas sidewalk (and who hasn’t?)

These obstacles are of course more of a challenge for people with reduced mobility. Bioethicist Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, who teaches disability at Emory University, uses the term misfit to describe these situations – not in the usual derogatory sense, but to indicate that there is between an individual’s physical abilities and the environment around them there is a discrepancy around it: a missed fit.

To address this from a design perspective, according to Hendren’s book, it takes a shift in the polarity of our thinking. Rather than the handicapped not fitting into the world, we might better view our surroundings as not generally workable.

This requires more than compliance with the ADA’s checklist requirements. A first priority should be to include people with disabilities in every design process.

“Disabled people have long been reshaping the environment,” says Hendren. They understand what is and what is not, and how to fix that slippage.

With that in mind, let me suggest better lighting in elevators because pressing a button shouldn’t be pressing my buttons.

A floor plan rendering by Van Tilburg, Banvard & Soderbergh of Munger Hall at UC Santa Barbara designed by Charles T. Munger, a billionaire and executive at Berkshire Hathaway.

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