We really need to figure this thing out, because I don't know about you, but it's not consistent for me at all. Do you turn in the general direction and head for the stairs? Do you walk backwards until you hear stairs?

I felt like turning would be faster because you're already facing the right way when you reach the stairs, but then I realised you're still a few steps away from the button anyway. Besides, walking backwards is a lot more consistent for me. Consistent in terms of reaching the stairs, at least; after that it's still just groping around in the dark.

I've even thought that using the keyboard for camera control could make it easier, but I've seen reports that this game doesn't do well with input modification programs and such.

The way I used to do was to hold both down and right for around 3-4 seconds, lower down the camera and turn around This required a lot of trial and error and it was super inconsistent While testing to see how fast you can do it, I got times around 2.50, but adding a human factor it's possible to get a 2.8, the speed of the character is essentially the same but there's a difference between being ready to click the button before the stairs and after, being more difficult to set up but both of them is hard in their own way

Ideally you would walk while turning around but the practice required to do it seems absurd, specially with the slow loading screen (which you can't speedup with Cheat engine fun fact, it's an actual loading screen)