Japanese Elevator Buttons

Many elevators in Japan have two sets of buttons. One standard set and one set lower than usual, whether it be directly beneath the first or oriented horizontally right next to a vertical set. When I first encountered two sets of up/down buttons, I had to pause for a few seconds before pressing a button. I was initially wondering whether the different buttons mapped to different elevator shafts, but later I realized the lower set was made for handicap accessibility.

This consideration make reasonable sense, but in practice the design looks confusing and redundant. For the up/down buttons (pictured on left), why not just have one set of buttons placed lower? As for the floor number buttons inside the elevator (pictured right), I ended up using the horizontal panel more often as this was what I saw first walking into the elevator and it was more informative with a display of the current floor number. Thus, the vertical panel could be eliminated as well.

{ Tags: accessibility, everyday, japan }