Are they just not practical? They seems cheaper to build instead of elevators for wheelchair bound people.
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Speaking from the US, our standards for accessibility (collectively called ADA guidelines) suggest a wheelchair accessible ramp for commercial businesses having a slope of 1:12. That is, for every 12 units of horizontal distance, the slope is allowed to rise by 1 unit.
A typical house story is going to be something in the ballpark of 10 feet, or around 3 meters. To install a ramp at the recommended commercial slope of 1:12, that would mean your ramp would have to be *120 feet* long, or *30 meters* long. That’s *way* longer than most houses are!
I should say that the ADA does allow wheelchair slopes to go up to a 3:12 slope for private residential use, which would condense that distance to about a third, but those slopes can be difficult for wheelchairs and motorized scooters to climb. 2:12 is a better compromise, but only reduces the slope distance by half. We’d still be talking about a 60′ / 15 meter ramp here. You’re still not going to fit that comfortably inside a house.
Contrast that with the typical rise/run of a common staircase, which will tend to be somewhere in the ballpark of 7:11 (7 units up for every 11 units long). That’s a lot closer to a 45 degree angle, meaning the staircase only needs to take up slightly more horizontal room than what it has to climb. Significantly more compact.
Elevators, though expensive as hell to install and keep maintained, simply take up a smaller footprint.
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