Is there a word for the phenomena where everyone benefits from design decisions made to help vulnerable populations?

ALostInquirer@lemm.ee to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 142 points –
33

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect

This might be it, although it might be specific to disability.

  • ex. Closed captions, cuts in sidewalks

When closed captioning for TVs was being rolled out by government mandate in the US, there was widespread anger over having the cost of a TV increase by $0.25 for everyone for a feature that would only help a few. I was sickened by the callousness.

Plus people rarely know in advance that they might become disabled later in life, so they are shooting themselves in the foot by protesting when they are lucky enough to be able bodied in the present day.

They won't be able bodied for long if they shoot themselves in the foot! Seriously though, some people refer to abled body people as TABs, which stands for Temporarily Able-Bodied, to drive the point that advocating against or ignoring issues which negatively impact people who are disabled may include themselves in the future.

I like that and will start using it. We’re all pretty helpless after birth and before death, so being able bodied is just a temporary phase in the middle, for those lucky enough to not be born with a disability or acquire one in the middle of life.

Huh, I've not read of that before! That definitely fits with what I was wondering, and points to other terms that may apply as well (universal/inclusive design). Thanks!

I believe it's called Universal Design. You can hear about that and curb cuts specifically in eps 308 of the 99% invisible podcast.

One of my coworkers was talking about how his wife (a truly hateful woman) was complaining about having been to a bathroom at a particular airport, and how they had changed them for trans people (she presumed). In particular, they had made all the stalls have floor-to-ceiling doors for privacy. I responded "wait... she's mad because they made the bathrooms better for everyone, because they did it for trans people? That is an objectively better bathroom situation. I can't imagine being upset by that."

People can still manage to be upset, but if they did do that for trans people (and I'm honestly not convinced), that's fantastic, and is a perfect example of what you're talking about, I think.

Maybe she's a closeted homosexual with a poo poo fetish. I'd ask the cunt outright if she was just to shut her up. It's always the ones who are militant about their homophobia that turn out to be closet cases.

"The curb effect" for the little Ramos people made on curbs for wheel chairs, that turned out to be useful for delivery people, baby carriages, bicyckes, etc

In the disability advocacy community, we like to say that accessibility is for everyone!

I tend to think of it as positive synergy but you’re right, it does need a more defined/known term.

Affordance? I've heard of it when talking about tools or utensils that are universally usable.

!Capitalism

But also !Communism so you .ml folks don't start creaming just yet.

I wonder if you're aware of the irony in your comment... in a discussion about making things accessible for everyone, you're using a symbol that only a subset of people would understand the meaning of, haha

Everyone can though, including the blind. It is very much accessible, whether everyone knows it at once isn't relevant to that.

Trying to use "!" as a NOT doesn't really work on Lemmy because it is superceded by the local usage of "!" as Community.