UD Dictionary

～About familiar UD items and services～

Handrail

Stairs in stations and parks sometimes could be an obstacle for handy people to move. Many stairs have a handrail attached in order to make it easy to go up and down, but this cannot be a complete solution. A conventional straight railing is slippery when you put your weight on it, so a wavy handrail crooked and bent was invented afterwards. The corrugated type has a vertical part that can be used like a handle and a horizontal part that can be used like a cane, which made people to apply weight and rely on it. Such simple idea and a little change of form could make such a difference in convenience.

I photographed it at Nagasaki Airport.

Our Thoughts

I thought that installing handrails is already fully considering universal designs, but I was surprised to know that this actually wasn’t true. I never found straight handrail slippery and inconvenient, but UD has to be kind for every single user, and I felt that it is necessary to look widely at society from different people’s perspectives.