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This musing was prompted by the announcement of the Redstone Science Fiction contest. They want stories set in a universal access world - one where everyone has equal access, regardless of whether they are disabled* or not. This would mean no stairs, multiple language options everywhere (including braille and sign language), etc.
There are two sides to the idea of a universal access world. The first is social, where people accept that everyone has different abilities, without the pity that tends to be thrown around in the modern world. The second is the environment created by that philosophy, where you don't expect people to change to use everyday items... you expect the everyday items to change**.
I've written stories with the social aspects, but I don't tend to write about universal access environments***. Writing a story that starts with a universal access environment, and keeps it all the way through, can make it seem like the adventure is being limited. Many possible conflicts are likely to destroy the accessible design, meaning it is no longer a universal access environment****. Any adventure taking place outside of the environment is not going to be accessible, and therefore won't be a universal access environment. There are no accessibility requirements for alien jungles on distant planets.
This can end up suggesting (however inadvertently) that the only way a disabled person can have an adventure is when the environment is tailor-made for them.
That isn't to say it's impossible to write a no-limits adventure set in a universal access environment. Any environment will have dangers and areas that aren't supposed to be accessed. The risk is it'd be very easy to write a story where disabled characters are reliant on this special environment and resist leaving it to visit the non-universal access wilderness beyond.
Given some of the discussion online, I think that's the route many people are heading down. Technology aids***** can be great, but when people don't know how to live without them, it's not really a positive view of an accessible world.
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* Arguably, a person stops being disabled when they're in a society that doesn't consider it a disability. For the sake of clarity, I'm using disabled in its modern day context, rather than what may or may not be seen as a disability in the future.
** Web design shows this in action. In the earlier days, it wasn't uncommon to visit sites that insisted you had to use a certain web browser at a certain resolution with specific browser settings. Designers expected the visitor to make changes in order to see the site. Now, designing a site like that makes you look very amateurish. The focus is on making it usable for as many people as possible.
*** That isn't to say I never will. I might enter the contest. I'm just more likely to throw a character out of a plane, than set them up in a comfortable home environment (unless I plan to blow their house up).
**** A real world example would be going on the London underground with a friend in a wheelchair. In theory, the space was designed for wheelchairs. They had a lift that went down to the platform. However, the lift had broken and a group of us ended up carrying the wheelchair down flights of stairs. Accessibility is not an area where the thought counts. If it's disrupted, it's no longer accessible.
***** Social aids can also have this issue. A blind person who is always led around is going to struggle when placed in an unfamiliar environment without the guide. This doesn't mean guides should never be used - just that if they're always used, it makes someone dependent when they could be independent.
