The city is aiming for a design standard called universal design, which allows people of all abilities to use a building in a way that is comfortable. A lot of newspapers and organizations point out that seniors and those with disabilities find knobs difficult to turn. I’d like to point out that so do people with their arms full of bags of groceries as do young children or people with really cold hands due to weather conditions. In fact, you don’t have to be physically challenged in any way to find it useful to be able to open a door using an elbow or forearm. Here’s another place I’d like to ban the knob—in public bathrooms. If the shutoff valve for the water didn’t require my hands I could presumably leave the bathroom without picking up the germs left behind by turning on the knob. As expected there is a public outcry. Here and here are a couple stories about the fate of the door knob. So. What do you think? Are you ready to toss out the round knob? You might want to consider it if you are planning to continue to live in your current home. While you don’t have to have arthritis to appreciate a handier way to open a door, 46 million Americans do have it. That’s a lot of Americans struggling to gain entry.
