Late one evening in 1936, an inventor named Joseph Friedman watched his young daughter struggle at a soda fountain counter. She was trying to drink a milkshake through a straight paper straw, but the counter was too high for her, and every time she bent the straw, the drink could not flow properly. Friedman adjusted the straw so it could bend without closing, and that simple idea became the bendable straw.
At first, it may have seemed like a small solution for one child, but hospitals soon became one of its most important early users. Bedridden patients could drink more safely and independently, without needing to sit up or depend fully on someone else. Over time, the same design became useful for children, older people, patients, travellers, and everyday users around the world. What began as a response to one person’s difficulty became a convenience for many.
This story shows a simple design lesson: when we solve problems for people who face the most difficulty, we often make life easier for everyone.
A similar lesson can be seen in the history of curb cuts. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, disabled students and activists in Berkeley, California began demanding streets that wheelchair users could actually navigate. At that time, many public places were built with steps, high pavements, and raised curbs that made independent movement very difficult. Some activists created rough curb ramps themselves as a bold protest, pushing the city to take the issue seriously and install proper concrete slopes.
Once curb ramps became part of the street, their wider value became clear. They were used not only by wheelchair users, but also by parents pushing strollers, workers moving goods, travellers pulling suitcases, elderly people walking carefully, and children riding bicycles. This idea is now known as the Curb Cut Effect. It shows that when society removes barriers for people who are most excluded, the benefits often spread to the wider public.
Pakistan needs this lesson urgently because many of our public spaces are still difficult to navigate. Broken pavements, steep stairs, open drains, uneven roads, poorly designed entrances, and pedestrian bridges without elevators create daily challenges for many people. These barriers do not affect only wheelchair users. They also affect elderly citizens, pregnant women, parents with young children, delivery workers, patients recovering from injury, and anyone carrying heavy bags through a busy market.
For a long time, these barriers have been treated as personal problems rather than design problems. If someone cannot climb stairs, they are expected to manage. If an elderly person cannot cross a bridge, they are expected to find another way. If a wheelchair user cannot enter a building, people may feel sympathy, but the building itself is rarely questioned. This way of thinking needs to change because the problem is not the person’s body. The problem is an environment that has not been designed for real human needs.
Modern public transport gives us a practical example. Metro Bus systems and the Orange Line Metro Train include accessibility features such as level boarding, elevators, tactile paving, and audio announcements at many stations. These features are important for people with disabilities, but they also make travel easier for elderly passengers, pregnant women, parents with children, shoppers carrying bags, and commuters who simply need a safer and clearer journey. When a station is easier to enter, understand, and move through, the whole public benefits.
The same shift is happening in Pakistan’s digital spaces. Mobile banking apps, e-commerce platforms, delivery services, learning portals, and government websites are becoming more important in daily life, but many people still struggle with small text, confusing layouts, formal language, and unclear instructions. When a digital service is difficult to use, people can be quietly excluded from banking, healthcare, education, employment, and public services.
A blind person may need screen readers, clear headings, proper button labels, and voice controls to use a smartphone. Those same features can also help a delivery rider using a phone in the bright, busy streets of Karachi, an older person struggling with tiny text, or a tired parent trying to complete a task quickly. Accessibility works best when it recognises that people’s abilities are not fixed. The same person may face different barriers depending on age, health, stress, lighting, language, or the device they are using.
The same is true for literacy and language. Many apps and websites assume that users can comfortably read formal English or complex Urdu, but that is not always true. Some people have limited literacy, some are more comfortable with regional languages, and some understand spoken instructions better than written ones. Simple language, clear icons, Urdu audio, voice prompts, and step by step guidance can help people who may otherwise be left behind.
This is especially important for financial inclusion. A mobile wallet or banking app may technically be available to everyone, but if people cannot understand how to use it, the service is not truly accessible. Clear design can help a small shopkeeper manage payments, an elderly person receive funds, a student pay fees, or a worker send money home. Accessibility, in this sense, is not only about fairness. It is also about better service delivery and stronger participation in the economy.
Pakistani businesses should also see accessibility as good customer experience. Research shared by Level Access connects digital accessibility with better user experience and customer satisfaction. Clear headings, readable text, proper contrast, simple navigation, and captions help people using assistive technology, but they also help ordinary customers find information faster and use content in noisy or busy environments.
This is especially relevant in marketing. Brands often spend large budgets trying to reach more people, but they may ignore simple barriers that stop people from engaging with their content. A beautiful campaign is less effective if the text is unreadable, the video has no captions, the website is confusing, or the call to action cannot be understood. Accessibility should not be added at the end of a project as a favour. It should be part of the thinking from the beginning.
At the heart of accessibility is a truth we often forget: our abilities change throughout life. A person may be able to climb stairs today but may struggle after an injury tomorrow. A young worker may have perfect eyesight now but may need larger text as they age. A parent holding a baby, a commuter carrying luggage, a patient recovering from surgery, or a student watching a video without sound may all benefit from design choices originally made for someone else.
Accessibility is not charity, and it is not a special favour for a small minority. It is a smarter way to design society around the reality of human life. Every smooth pavement, captioned video, readable website, clear public sign, voice guided service, and flexible policy helps create a country where more people can move, work, learn, travel, and participate with dignity.
The bendable straw, the curb cut, the level Metro platform, and the voice guided mobile app all remind us of the same lesson. When we build a world that includes people who are often left out, we do not lose anything. We gain public spaces, services, and systems that work better for everyone.
