Stairs are harder to walk, and higher risk of injury than slopes (imagine falling from stairs versus falling from slope).
So why aren’t slopes used more commonly in buildings?
Even stairs-shaped escalators are more common than slope-shaped escalators.
**Edit:** By “slopes”, I mean “ramps”. Pardon my English.
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Safe stairs are much steeper than safe slopes. The steepest safe stair for the general public is 1:1.6, while a safe ramp is 1:12. This means that using ramps to go up results in lots of going sideways. This example[This Example](https://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/04/70/83/4708391_2f004e0b_original.jpg) shows how stairs take you straight to the platform, while the ramp has to zig-zag and go a lot further. Going up 1 storey(4.3m) would require you to walk 6.9m horizontally on stairs, or 51.6m horizontally on ramps.
A gentle ramp with a handrail is the gold standard in universally accessible design. Anyone with wheels cannot use stairs, and so either ramps or lifts must be provided for them. However if the ramp is hundreds of metres long, then it is no longer universally accessible. There are lots of less abled people who can’t walk that far, and so would actually be much better served by an escalator, stairs, or a lift.
A lift is the most universally accessible way to go up or down, but they are expensive, prone to breaking down, and not safe during power cuts or fires, so for small height changes ramps are better.
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