Elevator Buttons
Elevator buttons are not the same everywhere. The ground floor can be considered as 0, 1, G, R or the first letter of the word used to say ground floor in whichever language. When going underground, it’s always different from one place to another, even within the same city.
A logical way to avoid confusion would be using mathematics or more specifically, numbers. Zero for the ground floor, 1, 2, 3, … as we go up and -1, -2, -3, … as we go down. No confusions there. The buttons for closing and opening doors are pretty much the same everywhere: arrows pointing towards or away from each other.
This photo was taken in an elevator at UQAM. Big numbers on big buttons make it impossible to misread. Things can’t be clearer, but why would every button appear twice? I get the thing for the blind people, but that could very well be on the buttons themselves. When blind people put their fingers there to read, it’s never hard enough for the button to be pressed. At least, they put different backgrounds.
I wonder why there is a star next to the R button. If it’s to show where the ground floor is, then what is the R for? Numbers can keep everything simple and easily understandable.
