While I disagree with the statement that elevator buttons are always found on the right (the office where I work has elevator buttons on both sides) , there are elevator buttons which are also on the left hand side as shown below
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That said, the predominance of elevator buttons being on the right hand side might be due to the fact that most of the people in the world are right handed and when they face towards the elevator doors the elevator buttons would be towards their right and it would be would be more comfortable to use their right hand to press the corresponding floor number as opposed to using their less dominant hand.
The control panel is often put on the right side as a default, with the intent of catering to a predominantly right-handed species, and sometimes to a right-handed culture. But that's only when there aren't other considerations, and there are lots of other considerations.
There are definitely site and installation dependencies. Some elevator cars are not mounted central with the doorways, leading to asymmetric car shapes, with a single door opening to the left, or to the right, while others have two doors parting in the middle. (The parking garage I use has three elevators, where the middle is asymmetric and has the panel on the left side, while the other two cars are symmetric and have the panels on their right sides.) Some sites maximize the width of cargo by opening the doors the full width of the car, meaning the panel must be mounted on a side wall, where it's visible as you walk in, eliminating the guesswork.
For installations where money is less of a concern than user convenience, they may install two panels, one on each side of the car. This is often the case in high end buildings. It's also common in hospitals, where usability, efficiency, and time considerations are always rated highly, and you don't want to delay someone by making them search for the panel. Two panels may also be chosen for reliability, as there are always redundant buttons and lights. When there are two panels, one will have all of the fire safety features and controls, while the other is simply a duplicate floor selection panel.
Two panels may also be more desirable in elevators that service the general public, where strangers are less likely to communicate than two co-workers working for a common employer. Of course actual public buildings are often built on a stringent budget to appease taxpayers, and two panels may be a luxury they forgo.
So in the elevators in our office, there are the typical buttons that you normally see in most elevators. I&#;m curious if anyone knows the differences between ones that are used to either close or open the doors. I normally see two different buttons for opening and two different buttons for closing.
< > <|> - for opening the doors
> < >|< - for closing the doors
What&#;s the difference for the buttons with the line down the center vs the buttons with no line?
I dug up a cite (mostly to make sure I didn&#;t have it backwards):
This image is from the actual ICC spec:
ICC charges money for the spec, but that excerpt is from the Minnesota Accessibility Code which is available online here:
So yeah, vertical line = front.
But you definitely have a point. Many people have complained that the symbol is not intuitive, and that very few people even know what the vertical line is supposed to mean.
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There is also this. You are standing in an elevator, facing the side wall. There is a door to your left and a door to your right. There is an identical control panel next to each door. Which door is the &#;front&#; and which door is the &#;rear&#;?
This isn&#;t even a made-up example. Our local hospital has an elevator like this. The first floor is the main floor, and the &#;front&#; entrance to the hospital is on this floor. The main patient entrance though is on the lower level in the rear of the hospital (there&#;s no parking out front). Is the &#;front&#; of the elevator the side that faces the first floor main entrance or the patient main entrance?
It&#;s a stupid standard.
Why would you need separate buttons for the door at the front and back of an elevator? It&#;s not like it can move with one door closed. Why not just have the same button open and close both doors? If it&#;s a security issue then presumably there would be a key that would enable/disable the door on the secure side.
The only scenario I can imagine where it&#;s useful is if you&#;re trying to escape zombies.
You&#;re surely not suggesting that the two buttons are there so that passengers can determine which side to open when there&#;s only an exit on one side - and that if they choose wrong the doors will open to a blank elevator shaft wall?
No, obviously the lift programming knows which side(s) has an exit available, and will only open the doors when there&#;s an exit.
So why won&#;t one button do?
First, the only cases I know of where both doors can open on the same floor also have the option to lock one door or the other. This would be for safety purposes in a freight elevator to keep anyone from entering while loading or to enter an already heavily loaded elevator. Another use is in hospitals where the patients, alive and deceased, need to be transported between floors that have rear doors to restricted areas. But in both those cases you don&#;t want the other door opening, or the elevator stopping at any floors you didn&#;t select.
So if there are any elevators that have both front and rear doors to regularly accessible areas I don&#;t know why one button wouldn&#;t do. Of course there would still be two buttons for the reason stated above, they just want to use the same control panel for different elevators. So you&#;d end up with two unnecessary pointless buttons, or two buttons that don&#;t do anything anyway.
And again, for security purposes when there are two doors. And then the same panels are used whether you need the buttons or not. And again, no buttons are needed to open and close any number of doors because the buttons can be programmed to do nothing at all, and often are. What part of this are you missing?
I&#;ve read your posts and responded to them. If you&#;d care to do the same rather than ignoring the points I made, that might help the conversation make progress. For example, when you ignored this point (for a second time):
You quoted this in your post #15, but replied with a non sequitur.
There may well be a situation that is best addressed with two buttons, but you haven&#;t stated it. The only situation that really makes sense is two exits where by default you don&#;t want one to open, but there is no security concern. So you don&#;t want key control because that would require giving a key to everyone taking the non-default exit. Maybe this is common in hotels?
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