Think about things
One of my pet dislikes are those people that pay lip-service to a particular problem, such as Accessibility, Internationalisation or Usability, without actually thinking about them.
My favourite example can be found at the Trafford Centre in Manchester, England.
Somebody there has clearly realised that accessibility is a problem, and ensured that every single sign has Braille added to it so that partially-sighted or blind people are able to read what they say.
They’ve only been paying lip-service to the problem though, and not thinking about it.
The evidence? The following sign, mounted directly on a door, with Braille on it:
Do not stand directly in front of this door.
Hmm, I would think that an excellent
case for a Braille sign: a blind person
feeling along a wall, etc. without
realising they are standing in front
of a door.
Unless there was a better way of
informing them of this fact _before_ they
stood in front of the door; but I’d have
to see the layout of the area to
decide that.
- Alastair
That is the mother of hilarity. Thanks for a good morning laugh. Bureaucratic environments often simultaneously entertain and insult me. It could be that the person who made the rule meant well but their boss hired an idiot to implement the plan.
That’s nothing. I went to a drive through ATM and it had braille on it… for all the blind drivers that wanted to withdraw money from the bank in their car.
With the sentence:
“These instructions are provided in braille for our seeing impaired customers.”
The only possible reason for that message is to make me think my bank cares about the disabled.
It reminds me of some other signs I saw on a door. The sign said said “push” or “pull”, also written in braille. Imagine you are blind and walk up to a door to open it, you are not sure whether to push or pull. What would you do, start to look for a braille sign or just grab the handle and open the door?