While doing a Wheelchair exercise for Human Factors at Kwantlen University College I decided to use the elevator in my building that is intended only for people in wheelchairs and people with strollers.  At first, I thought that if is intended for those two groups of people that the design is already universal, however, "being in those people shoes" for a day I did not find that elevator as useful, I actually got pretty scared while in there.

First of all, there was no push button to open the door, in fact I had to push and hold the button in order for elevator to come.

Then I had to push myself inside, where I found two buttons for going up and down, which I needed to push and hold again in order for elevator to move.  For some reason, as I was holding the down button, the elevator did not move.  Meanwhile I thought that it was broken; then I wanted to go back through the door I entered but since there was not enough space to turn around inside the elevator, I could not really move backwards in my wheelchair, and this is when I got scared because there was nobody to help me.  I kept on pushing both buttons for another minute after which it started moving.  Since there was no window in the door that was in front of me where I was supposed to exit, there was no visual clue until what moment I have to hold the down button.  After that, as I was about to exit, I had to push myself out of the elevator, which was very hard to do as the door was pretty heavy, and there was no handle on it either.

So, my design idea is very simple.  Put the window on both doors and put push button at least inside the elevator for easy exiting, as well as put an emergency button (in case if somebody stuck there and can not exit at least they can call for help).

These changes will allow more groups of people to be able to use this elevator, especially older people who don't have much of a strenght in their bodies.