Accessibility Law Flaws In Infrastructure

[mdrejhon]

GO redesigned their website to follow accessibility law.

Unfortunately, the accessibility law is flawed.

A great GO employee (now probably scolded by manager trying in good faith to follow accesibility las) revealed a good workaround.

Now it is gone.

GO Transit has added a capture of the Union Station departure boards that refreshes every 5 minutes or so with current departure info. You can just bookmark the URL of the image.. I've done so on my iPod Touch so I can easily access it when need be.


Image located at:

http://gotransit.com/images/go_pins1.jpg

Page at:
http://gotransit.com/publicroot/tripstatus/default.htm

This was amazing, seeing a web clone of the station infoboards (green and black rows)

Now GO has deleted this great replacement to "Immediate departures at Union".

Why?

 

[mdrejhon]

The law is sometimes the problem. Sometimes it's a headbanger at no fault to Metrolinx except for them trying to follow flawed web accessibility guidelines. (Many are good, but following excessively to letter has created some reduced accessibility)

<sardonic>Quick, tell Ford that there were Liberal modifications to AODA that made it even more "flawed on average", and Ford will quickly fix the GO website.</sardonic>

That GO employee needs a raise, not be told to remove these signs!

 

[mdrejhon]

Here is more proof of Accessibility Law flaws.

Buttons in public bathrooms.

Two red buttons in them.

How do I tell apart the Emergency button apart from Door Lock buttons.

What if I am vision impaired, I cannot tell them apart.

I accidentally pressed the Emergency button (identical) when trying to lock the door.

They were forced by law to change the buttons to become nearly identical.

It happened to three different Ontario bathrooms (at a cafe, at a restaurant, and at a public agency)

The same "Well intentioned but gravely flawed" accessibility law flaws are the exact same reason why the GO website is currently BøRk3d for me, less accessible to this deafie (me!).

Stupid AODA.

STOOOOPID

STOOOOPID

 

[mdrejhon]

Next week, I am going to post more photos of other infrastructure flaws (including non-GO)...

....caused by new accessibility flaws injected by overzealous-following of accessibility law or missed elements.

I have been noticing some lately, including pedestrian infrastructure (slippery paint at a street corner) that just became more dangerous to me because it tried to follow an accessibility law. SMH. The same malarkey as why GO's website is less accessible to me.

 

[mdrejhon]

Here's another transportation infrastructure (pedestrian) degraded by well intentions:

Some accessibility law (not sure if municipal or provincial) mandated pedestrian crossing corners to have a distinct color.

The black paint that got applied made it more slippery than the surrounding sidewalk, despite the texture. Someone told me they slipped on this one.

To the city partial credit (Hamilton), they adjusted so that they dye the concrete instead (apply a dye while concrete is still wet) and that is improving others, but several traction-flawed crossings still remain. Uggggg.

 

[Johnny Au]

For the washroom buttons, why can't the buttons have Braille on them?

For the sidewalk, what if someone stepped on the sidewalk before being cured, leaving a deep footprint on it?