The wiki says the access tag represents the *legal* access condition, so not
related to the physical aspects of the feature.
Reading the wiki a bit, I see the access on gates exists to override the
default characteristics inherent to the barrier type: “Each barrier has its own
accessibility defaults. Use tag access=* to override them.” [1]
So, lift_gate with access=foot is probably redundant, because the lift_gates I
can think of do not have features that effectively prevent foot passage (they
might deter or have signs, but the physical construction of the gate itself is
not preventing foot passage).
I don’t know where the default accessibility condition per gate type can be
consulted, however.
[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Barriers
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