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.

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tobyjsullivan 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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sdeframond 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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!

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tonyarkles 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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my-huge-pony 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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apothegm 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.