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It's both "the entire nation's infrastructure." and not that. What I mean is... many cases are individual: the ramp for that library; the door knobs/handles in

It's both "the entire nation's infrastructure." and not that. What I mean is... many cases are individual: the ramp for that library; the door knobs/handles in that office; the floor indicators in this lift/elevator; the audio announcements (or lack of) on the busses/trains; the small print on contracts; live subtitling at the theatre; the checkout button on this web site; the checkout button on that website. You get the idea. The vast majority of cases are individual; owned by myriad businesses, charities, foundations. The problem the OP is circling is the same as that proposed by the Social Model of disability. Most systems present obstacles to disabled users which could have been avoided if those systems' owners and designers and included disabled people in the design phase. Instead, no-one does this claiming it's too expensive, forgetting they themselves will be disabled in the future (most people become disabled in one way or another, with age). We all kick the can down the road, rather than deal with it today. Dealing with it is hard. The "national level infrastructure" aspect is a mixture of cultural praxis/expectation and, potentially, government carrot to go with the (existing) government stick (regulation; that most people try to ignore). (I'm not saying the Social Model of Disability is 100% right. I feel it's viewpoint is hugely instructive it's not the whole story.)

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
SpicyLemonZest 2mo ago
But don't you see how the fact that many cases are individual makes it harder? You mention doorknobs, and it's easy to declare (which is why the US government has declared) that lever style door handles are more accessible and should be preferred. It's hard, impossibly so, to construct a world where nobody with wrist mobility problems will ever encounter a round doorknob they'd like to open.
- jnovek 2mo ago
  It seems like the implication here is “if we can’t do anything, we shouldn’t do anything at all” under the social model. Not every doorknob will be disability friendly. If pressure from the social model fixes 20% of doorknobs, now there is a group of people can open 20% of doors where they could open 0% before.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2mo ago
    My intended implication is that pressure from the social model has achieved as much as it can, and the left over problems must be resolved through other means. The vast majority of doorknobs I personally interact with, including 100% of the ones at my house and workplace, are lever-style.
    - jnovek 2mo ago
      As a disabled person, my experience indicates that we’re not even close to what the social model could achieve. Example: I have a chronic pain disorder. I have substantial difficulty working in an office. WFH was an absolute blessing, and RTO has been a curse. RTO is a regressive policy for disabled people who found they were finally able to participate in their industry for the first time in ages. Now they are expected to take on extra burden to function in an able-bodied world. Many, whose bodies do not allow that option simply have to go back on SSDI. That is an example of progress in the social model that has regressed back to the medical model.
      - SpicyLemonZest 2mo ago
        I'm sympathetic to your problems, but I don't think this has anything to do with the social model or medical model. Even the strongest advocates of the social model of disability wouldn't argue, I don't think, that construction site supervisors must be allowed to work from home after setting up some cameras and microphones to monitor what's happening. The dispute here is that RTO employers think working together in an office is similarly important, but you think they're wrong and WFH is just as good.
        jnovek 2mo ago
        > Even the strongest advocates of the social model of disability wouldn't argue, I don't think, that construction site supervisors must be allowed to work from home after setting up some cameras and microphones to monitor what's happening. That is a man of straw! I’m talking about desk jobs, here, and I think that’s pretty clear from my comment above. I don’t know how RTO could be seen as anything but the medical model — Medical model: it is the disabled person’s responsibility to figure out how to function in society. Social model: it is society’s responsibility to accommodate people with disabilities. In any case, I’m actively involved in the disability community and this is one of the biggest — if not the biggest — conversations in the community recent years. WFH/RTO has become the poster-child for the conflict between the medical and social model. This is why I chose it as an example.
- 8note 2mo ago
  > it's hard, impossibly so, to construct a world where nobody with wrist mobility problems will ever encounter a round doorknob they'd like to open. its not that hard to get to 99.999% though. stop selling door knobs, or doors that accept round knobs. add incentives to swap or return round knobs. include checks for round knobs both for building inspections and insurance. you wont wont get the last couple people that build their own doors and machine their own knobs, but thats gonna be a really small segment
  - SpicyLemonZest 2mo ago
    You can't talk about things from a social model perspective without modeling the political realities of the policies you're proposing. A national ban on the sale of round doorknobs would not pass, and local bans would create an enormous backlash which might well ruin the longstanding consensus that ADA compliance requires levers.
  - keybrd-intrrpt 2mo ago
    > stop selling door knobs, or doors that accept round knobs. Ok, but that's not a "Silicon Valley" thing. Go talk to politicians or Home Depot and Lowe's and the home builders conventions. That's why the post screams of mis-placed anger. Silicon Valley probably would invent FaceID / NFC / Passkeys / WIFI authentication for doors - but that doesn't mean they'll get installed anywhere.
ashleyn 2mo ago
A great deal of changes proposed to make disabled peoples' lives easier end up having many fringe benefits for the non-disabled. The classic example is strollers or hand trucks going up the little dip on the sidewalk rather than having to lug them over an enormous curb. The cost argument starts looking weak when you observe there's always billions of dollars shaken from magical couch cushions whenever it's time to wage another losing war.
- PaulHoule 2mo ago
  In terms of the web two of the greatest things we could do for accessibility: (1) eliminate GDPR pop-ups (and all pop-ups and senseless modal dialogs) and (2) eliminate cloudflare harassment, ReCAPTCHA harassment and anubis harassment. Any of those things should be an immediate F rank for WCAG.
  - Vinnl 2mo ago
    For 1: https://killthecookiebanner.eu/ https://killthecookiebanner.eu/
- Henchman21 2mo ago
  The cost argument is a cover for institutional cruelty. Some people really really want to be cruel. Usually those folks are the most emotionally damaged people IME.
jnovek 2mo ago
> the Social Model of disability The best way I’ve heard this articulated is: Under the medical model, disabled individuals are expected to change their behavior to accommodate (fit on with) society. We ask people whose lives are already more difficult than average to do additional work. Under the social model, we ask all able-bodied people to accommodate disabled individuals instead. Further, the social model says that any policy that affects disabled people should be crafted by or with disabled people who are affected by that policy. Nothing about us without us. I’m disabled and became disabled as an adult and, in my experience, after becoming disabled I’ve faced rampant discrimination that wasn’t there before. I’ve been fired twice in the last 10 years due to disability-related issues. I have no recourse, anything I could do would risk torpedoing my career. This is life under the medical model. You’re expected to live a smaller existence. I support the social model. It’s the one where I get to have agency.
- AlexandrB 2mo ago
  > Under the social model, we ask all able-bodied people to accommodate disabled individuals instead. This sounds good in the abstract, but the devil is in the details. What specific accommodation is being asked for? What counts as a disability? For example, should I simply have to ignore angry outbursts directed at me and my coworkers from someone with oppositional defiance disorder[1]? Am I supposed to take someone's word that they have ODD or can I request proof from a medical professional? There are real tradeoffs here. You see it in how these kinds of accommodations are abused at elite universities[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder [2] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/8/harvard-undergrad-disabilities-climb/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/8/harvard-undergr...
  - Avshalom 2mo ago
    I mean you kinda are just expected to ignore angry outbursts directed at you from anyone. That's not even about disability, it's just part of the social contract that you don't start throwing blows when people yell at you.
  - MSKJ 2mo ago
TulliusCicero 2mo ago
> The vast majority of cases are individual; owned by myriad businesses, charities, foundations. Agreed, but the solution is more general. If you want handicapped people to have more access, that probably means widespread societal change through regulations, like the ADA (which obviously didn't fix everything, but was at least a big step forward).
coryrc 2mo ago
Another way to look at the social model is kids playing in neighborhoods. It's not unsafe to walk from one place to another because of lousy sidewalks or excessive leaves: it's the roads we put between any place they want to go. This might've been tolerable when each household only had 1 car and it was gone all day, but not now that everybody has a RAM Child-squasher 2500. In my neighborhood the sidewalks also just... end randomly, would be awful to live here and be blind. Would be a lot better to be blind if you weren't a misstep away from getting run over.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

SpicyLemonZest 2mo ago

But don't you see how the fact that many cases are individual makes it harder? You mention doorknobs, and it's easy to declare (which is why the US government has declared) that lever style door handles are more accessible and should be preferred. It's hard, impossibly so, to construct a world where nobody with wrist mobility problems will ever encounter a round doorknob they'd like to open.

jnovek 2mo ago
It seems like the implication here is “if we can’t do anything, we shouldn’t do anything at all” under the social model. Not every doorknob will be disability friendly. If pressure from the social model fixes 20% of doorknobs, now there is a group of people can open 20% of doors where they could open 0% before.
- SpicyLemonZest 2mo ago
  My intended implication is that pressure from the social model has achieved as much as it can, and the left over problems must be resolved through other means. The vast majority of doorknobs I personally interact with, including 100% of the ones at my house and workplace, are lever-style.
  - jnovek 2mo ago
    As a disabled person, my experience indicates that we’re not even close to what the social model could achieve. Example: I have a chronic pain disorder. I have substantial difficulty working in an office. WFH was an absolute blessing, and RTO has been a curse. RTO is a regressive policy for disabled people who found they were finally able to participate in their industry for the first time in ages. Now they are expected to take on extra burden to function in an able-bodied world. Many, whose bodies do not allow that option simply have to go back on SSDI. That is an example of progress in the social model that has regressed back to the medical model.
    - SpicyLemonZest 2mo ago
      I'm sympathetic to your problems, but I don't think this has anything to do with the social model or medical model. Even the strongest advocates of the social model of disability wouldn't argue, I don't think, that construction site supervisors must be allowed to work from home after setting up some cameras and microphones to monitor what's happening. The dispute here is that RTO employers think working together in an office is similarly important, but you think they're wrong and WFH is just as good.
      - jnovek 2mo ago
        > Even the strongest advocates of the social model of disability wouldn't argue, I don't think, that construction site supervisors must be allowed to work from home after setting up some cameras and microphones to monitor what's happening. That is a man of straw! I’m talking about desk jobs, here, and I think that’s pretty clear from my comment above. I don’t know how RTO could be seen as anything but the medical model — Medical model: it is the disabled person’s responsibility to figure out how to function in society. Social model: it is society’s responsibility to accommodate people with disabilities. In any case, I’m actively involved in the disability community and this is one of the biggest — if not the biggest — conversations in the community recent years. WFH/RTO has become the poster-child for the conflict between the medical and social model. This is why I chose it as an example.
8note 2mo ago
> it's hard, impossibly so, to construct a world where nobody with wrist mobility problems will ever encounter a round doorknob they'd like to open. its not that hard to get to 99.999% though. stop selling door knobs, or doors that accept round knobs. add incentives to swap or return round knobs. include checks for round knobs both for building inspections and insurance. you wont wont get the last couple people that build their own doors and machine their own knobs, but thats gonna be a really small segment
- SpicyLemonZest 2mo ago
  You can't talk about things from a social model perspective without modeling the political realities of the policies you're proposing. A national ban on the sale of round doorknobs would not pass, and local bans would create an enormous backlash which might well ruin the longstanding consensus that ADA compliance requires levers.
- keybrd-intrrpt 2mo ago
  > stop selling door knobs, or doors that accept round knobs. Ok, but that's not a "Silicon Valley" thing. Go talk to politicians or Home Depot and Lowe's and the home builders conventions. That's why the post screams of mis-placed anger. Silicon Valley probably would invent FaceID / NFC / Passkeys / WIFI authentication for doors - but that doesn't mean they'll get installed anywhere.

ashleyn 2mo ago

A great deal of changes proposed to make disabled peoples' lives easier end up having many fringe benefits for the non-disabled. The classic example is strollers or hand trucks going up the little dip on the sidewalk rather than having to lug them over an enormous curb. The cost argument starts looking weak when you observe there's always billions of dollars shaken from magical couch cushions whenever it's time to wage another losing war.

PaulHoule 2mo ago
In terms of the web two of the greatest things we could do for accessibility: (1) eliminate GDPR pop-ups (and all pop-ups and senseless modal dialogs) and (2) eliminate cloudflare harassment, ReCAPTCHA harassment and anubis harassment. Any of those things should be an immediate F rank for WCAG.
- Vinnl 2mo ago
  For 1: https://killthecookiebanner.eu/ https://killthecookiebanner.eu/
Henchman21 2mo ago
The cost argument is a cover for institutional cruelty. Some people really really want to be cruel. Usually those folks are the most emotionally damaged people IME.

jnovek 2mo ago

> the Social Model of disability The best way I’ve heard this articulated is: Under the medical model, disabled individuals are expected to change their behavior to accommodate (fit on with) society. We ask people whose lives are already more difficult than average to do additional work. Under the social model, we ask all able-bodied people to accommodate disabled individuals instead. Further, the social model says that any policy that affects disabled people should be crafted by or with disabled people who are affected by that policy. Nothing about us without us. I’m disabled and became disabled as an adult and, in my experience, after becoming disabled I’ve faced rampant discrimination that wasn’t there before. I’ve been fired twice in the last 10 years due to disability-related issues. I have no recourse, anything I could do would risk torpedoing my career. This is life under the medical model. You’re expected to live a smaller existence. I support the social model. It’s the one where I get to have agency.

AlexandrB 2mo ago
> Under the social model, we ask all able-bodied people to accommodate disabled individuals instead. This sounds good in the abstract, but the devil is in the details. What specific accommodation is being asked for? What counts as a disability? For example, should I simply have to ignore angry outbursts directed at me and my coworkers from someone with oppositional defiance disorder[1]? Am I supposed to take someone's word that they have ODD or can I request proof from a medical professional? There are real tradeoffs here. You see it in how these kinds of accommodations are abused at elite universities[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder [2] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/8/harvard-undergrad-disabilities-climb/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/8/harvard-undergr...
- Avshalom 2mo ago
  I mean you kinda are just expected to ignore angry outbursts directed at you from anyone. That's not even about disability, it's just part of the social contract that you don't start throwing blows when people yell at you.
- MSKJ 2mo ago

TulliusCicero 2mo ago

> The vast majority of cases are individual; owned by myriad businesses, charities, foundations. Agreed, but the solution is more general. If you want handicapped people to have more access, that probably means widespread societal change through regulations, like the ADA (which obviously didn't fix everything, but was at least a big step forward).

coryrc 2mo ago

Another way to look at the social model is kids playing in neighborhoods. It's not unsafe to walk from one place to another because of lousy sidewalks or excessive leaves: it's the roads we put between any place they want to go. This might've been tolerable when each household only had 1 car and it was gone all day, but not now that everybody has a RAM Child-squasher 2500. In my neighborhood the sidewalks also just... end randomly, would be awful to live here and be blind. Would be a lot better to be blind if you weren't a misstep away from getting run over.