Universal Design Isn’t Just for Disabled People

As I write this, I’m on a cruise.

Cruises are marketed as easy. Everything is contained, everything is planned, everything is designed for comfort and leisure. And yet one of the most basic human needs - using the bathroom - has once again become an exercise in strategy, guesswork, and unnecessary stress.

I’m using a bathroom here to illustrate the issue, but this isn’t really about bathrooms or cruises. And it isn’t only about blind people. Bathrooms are simply a familiar, everyday example of a much larger design problem - one that shows up everywhere once you start noticing it.

Universal design is often misunderstood as “design for disabled people.” But that framing misses the point entirely. A classic example is a ramp.

Yes, ramps are essential for wheelchair users and people who use other mobility devices. But who else benefits? Parents pushing strollers. Travelers rolling luggage. Delivery workers using dollies. Cyclists. People with temporary injuries. Older adults. Even someone who just doesn’t want to deal with stairs that day.

The ramp doesn’t just accommodate disability - it removes challenges for everyone.

Bathrooms work the same way.

Whenever I’m in an unfamiliar place, I try to locate a family or companion bathroom first. I prefer them because navigating public bathrooms as a blind person is unpredictable at best and exhausting and stressful at worst. There is no standard layout. No consistent design. No reliable cues that tell you what you’re about to walk into before you’re already inside.

Public bathrooms are a guessing game.

Sometimes you enter a large open anteroom with sinks and mirrors, with the stalls tucked somewhere beyond that. Sometimes the stalls are immediately to your right. Sometimes they’re straight ahead. Sometimes there’s a divider wall placed just where you don’t expect it. Sometimes the sinks are touchless and completely silent. You never know until you’re already navigating the space.

On this ship, I’ve learned there are no companion or family bathrooms at all. Zero.

That leaves me with a familiar set of options:

• Navigate a public bathroom blind and alone-wandering around aimlessly,

• Hope there is another woman in the bathroom who will offer to help orient me

• Go all the way back to my cabin every single time I need to use the bathroom

• Or, when necessary, have my husband walk me into the women’s bathroom to help me find a stall, the sink, and the exit

  
  

None of these options are ideal. But sometimes it’s too urgent, too time-consuming, and too frustrating to wait for an elevator, go back to my room just to pee, and then take the elevator again to resume my activities.

And if there are other women in the bathroom when my husband helps me my feeling is Oh well. This is what happens when design leaves people with workarounds instead of access.

This isn’t about this particular ship or cruise line. It’s not about blame. It’s about patterns - patterns that show up in buildings, transportation systems, websites, products, and services every day. Bathrooms are good illustrations of the issue and just happen to make the consequences impossible to ignore.

For sighted people, public bathrooms are usually just mildly annoying. For blind people, they can be disorienting, unsafe, and exhausting. But the underlying issue - environments designed around one assumed “default” way of moving, perceiving, and navigating — affects far more than one disability group.

Even something as simple as “walk in and turn right” assumes consistency and shared context. When those assumptions break down, people with cognitive disabilities, mobility impairments, chronic illnesses, aging bodies, temporary injuries, or even simple unfamiliarity with a space are affected too.

Universal design is about recognizing those realities upfront instead of treating them as special cases.

Bathrooms are also intimate spaces. Needing help in them is uncomfortable. Repeatedly losing independence over something this basic takes a quiet toll - the same kind of toll people experience in other spaces that weren’t designed with them in mind, whether that’s a confusing transit station, a poorly designed website, or a building with no clear wayfinding.

When these barriers come up, the suggested solutions often sound reasonable but miss the point entirely: “Just ask someone to help which assumes there is someone there to help-or for that matter willing to help.”,“Just go back to your room.”“Just use the accessible stall-really? How does one presume I can find the accessible Stahl?”

These are not solutions. They’re coping strategies that shift responsibility away from design and onto individuals.

Universal design asks a different question: How can we design spaces from the beginning to work for as many people as possible?

In bathrooms, that might mean more consistent layouts, predictable placement of fixtures, tactile or non-visual orientation cues, and best solution of all- companion or family bathrooms that are standard rather than rare.

In other spaces, it might mean clearer layouts that don’t assume everyone moves, sees, thinks, or processes information the same way.

The specifics change, but the principle stays the same.

And this isn’t only about blind people. Universal design benefits parents juggling children, people with cognitive disabilities, older adults, people with temporary injuries, people navigating stress or fatigue, and anyone encountering a space for the first time. It reduces friction. It reduces stress. It preserves independence and dignity.

I don’t want a special blind bathroom. I don’t want constant workarounds. I want environments that acknowledge human variation and don’t require people to ask for exceptions just to participate.

So, here’s the ask - and it’s a realistic one.

If you’re an architect, designer, builder, or planner, treat universal design as a baseline, not a bonus. If you manage or own a public space, pay attention to the quiet barriers people work around every day. If you help set standards, policies, or renovation priorities, push for consistency and predictability rather than minimum compliance. And for God’s sake, consult disabled people - people with lived experience who understand universal design because they live it. We are natural experts.

If you’ve never had to think about these things before, start noticing what spaces assume about the people moving through them.

Accessibility rarely fails in dramatic ways. More often, it fails in small, ordinary moments - like needing to pee, catch a train, read a sign, or get into a building.

Designing better from the start won’t solve everything. But it will mean fewer people are left improvising in spaces that were never designed with them in mind.

And that’s a goal worth building toward.

Written By Michelle Friedman

Michelle Friedman is the board chair of Keshet in Chicago, a member of Disability Lead and has been a disability advocate for 40 years. She has written two children’s books and is a frequent speaker for elementary and high school-age students. #AllInForAllAbilities