How Accessible Design Leads to Universal Innovation
How a blind friend, an arthritic wife, and the deaf community unknowingly reshaped the world
Imagine this: You’re pulling a suitcase across the street. As you reach the curb, there’s a smooth little ramp that makes the crossing effortless.
That small design feature, called a curb cut, wasn’t made for travelers or delivery drivers. It was created in the 1970s for wheelchair users.
And yet, everyone uses it.
This is the curb-cut effect: when you design something for people with disabilities, you often end up improving life for everyone else too. What begins as “accessible design” turns into universal innovation.
Here are a few everyday tools we all love, but that were originally invented with inclusion in mind.
The Typewriter: Built for a Blind Accountant
In the early 1800s, Italian inventor Pellegrino Turri created a machine for his friend, Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano, who was blind. She wanted to write letters independently and legibly.
Turri’s invention, one of the first typewriters, allowed her to do just that.
Decades later, innovators like Christopher Latham Sholes refined the design, eventually creating the typewriter that transformed business, literature, and communication.
What started as a personal tool for someone with a visual impairment became the foundation of the modern keyboard, and by extension, computers, smartphones, and the internet as we know it.
SMS Texting: A Silent Solution That Spoke Volumes
Text messaging (SMS) wasn’t originally designed for teens sneaking notes in class or couples exchanging “goodnight.”
It was developed in the 1980s and early 90s to support deaf and hard-of-hearing users who couldn’t use voice calls. The idea was simple: let users send short written messages over the phone network.
What happened next was unexpected: the world fell in love with texting.
By the 2000s, SMS was ubiquitous. It paved the way for platforms like WhatsApp, Messenger, and even Twitter (originally limited to 140 characters for this very reason).
What started as a workaround became a communication revolution.
OXO Good Grips: Ergonomics Inspired by Arthritis
In the 1990s, industrial designer Sam Farber noticed his wife, Betsey, struggling to peel apples due to arthritis. Standard kitchen tools were painful to use.
So he designed a better one: soft, contoured, and easy to grip.
That simple act of empathy became OXO Good Grips, a beloved line of kitchen tools known for their comfort, aesthetics, and durability. Today, OXO is a go-to brand in kitchens around the world, not because they were designed for the average user, but because they weren’t.
They designed for someone who needed more, and in doing so, created something better.
More Everyday Products That Began With Accessibility
These aren’t outliers. The link between accessible design and mainstream success runs deep:
Curb Cuts: As mentioned before, now used by people with strollers, carts, bikes, luggage, and more.
Audiobooks: Originally for the blind; now a staple for commuters, multitaskers, and readers on the go.
Closed Captions: Created for deaf viewers; now used in noisy environments, offices, and for learning new languages.
Electric Toothbrushes: Invented for people with limited mobility; now widely adopted for better hygiene.
Dark Mode: First embraced by users with visual sensitivity; now preferred by many for comfort and battery savings.
Voice Assistants (like Siri, Alexa): Built with accessibility in mind, now used by almost everyone for convenience
Why This Matters: Design for the Edges, Benefit the Middle
There’s a myth that designing for accessibility is a niche practice.
But these stories reveal a deeper truth: when we design for those at the margins, we often invent for the majority.
It’s not just good ethics. It’s good design. It’s good business.
This approach is known as universal design, creating experiences that are usable by the widest range of people, without the need for special adaptations.
Think of it as designing for inclusion first, and watching innovation follow.
Final Thought: Innovation Begins with Empathy
Whether it's a typewriter for a blind friend, a text service for the deaf, or a vegetable peeler for an arthritic wife, the origin stories of these tools remind us of something powerful:
When we build for people who are often excluded, we end up creating things everyone uses.
Next time you’re designing a product, solving a problem, or writing code, start by asking:
Who might be left out?
Because solving their problem might just lead you to the next big idea!
Further Reading:
Stanford Social Innovation Review: The Curb-Cut Effect
This blog post was inspired by UX Design in Practice - Accessibility and Collaboration, a course by Microsoft.