Barrier-Free World
| Accessibility Audit Checklist Is the Building Code Enough? |
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| Too often businesses lull themselves into a false sense that they have met the needs of people with disabilities, when in fact, they have fallen significantly short of their good intensions. Wasted time and money in renovating a building to meet the needs of people with disabilities without knowing or understanding what those needs are become costly errors to you and frustrating to those who rely on you to supply them with access to your services. Too often businesses lull themselves into a false sense that they have met the needs of people with disabilities, when in fact, they have fallen significantly short of their good intensions. Wasted time and money in renovating a building to meet the needs of people with disabilities without knowing or understanding what those needs are become costly errors to you and frustrating to those who rely on you to supply them with access to your services. Okay, so you are moving into a new building and have worked with an architect. He/she designates washroom facilities to be “accessible”, but what information have they used when setting the criteria by which you will be judged by your customers? And, let us say, for example, that the your building has passed the building inspection. Can you relax in knowing that you have truly met the needs of your customers? Sadly not. Many buildings that we have inspected, that are new buildings or recently renovated, do not meet the Ontario Building Code requirements for accessibility. It isn’t enough to make a toilet stall wider. It needs to be wide enough to allow a person using a wheelchair to bring their chair into the space with him/her and allow him/her to transfer safely and easily from the chair onto or off of the toilet. It needs to be wide enough that the chair can be brought into the space and the door closed. How many of your accessible washroom stalls have doors that self-close? Or more importantly, how many of your accessible washroom stalls have door handles on the inside that allow a person to pull the door closed? So, if the building inspector gave you a passing grade, what happened? The Ontario Building Code is a huge document with a few hundred pages of guidelines that inspectors are ensuring have been met by the architects and contractors. They are investigating the plumbing, electrical, heating and overall structure to make sure the building is safe. Unfortunately, many simply don’t take the time to ensure that the criteria set out in the “Code” are being met when it comes to accessibility. After all, a larger toilet stall should mean its accessible, right? Washrooms are not the only area where businesses try to facilitate the needs of people with disabilities. How about the doorways entering your building — are they fitted with automatic door openers? If you so, good for you, you are part way there! But, what criteria was used when selecting the door activation device? If you’ve selected the small red button design, you’ve been misinformed. The smaller button area is more difficult for a person with a disability to target and activate. These switch devices should have a minimum dimension of 25mm x 75mm. Once the person has activated the door opener will he or she have to maneuver around the open door to travel through? Or will they have a clear path of travel to enter your business? Do you have signage on the door to let people know which door will open? If not, you run the risk that someone will accidentally walk into the door as it opens towards them. What about that red button? Surely the red color will help a person find the button more easily; so you can’t have been that wrong, could you? It is recommended that the color yellow is used when trying to accommodate the needs of a person with low vision. So why use red? Has it really made that much of a difference, especially if the person can’t narrow in on the small target? The red color will be mostly beneficial to those who can see or when trying to grab the attention of a male bovine. Here’s one last area of your facility that we will consider in this issue. What about your accessible parking spaces? Besides needing to ensure that the accessible parking spaces are properly marked with the international symbol for accessibility (wheelchair symbol) painted on the parking space surface, and a vertically mounted sign posted directly in front of the space telling other drivers that this space is reserved exclusively for those customers with disabilities, have you posted the fine for violating the rule? Have you posted the local city bylaw that has jurisdiction for imposing the fine? If not, you’ve created a loop-hole for violators. Have you made the parking space any bigger than any of the others spaces? Many people with disabilities who use these spaces are relying on you to create a parking space that will allow him or her to exit their car and transfer into their wheelchair safely. Standard parking spaces simply do not give enough room for a person with a disability to do this. Have you painted the outline of your parking spaces in white or in yellow? Living in a climate that spends several months of the year with snow on the ground, it begs the question of why you would rely on white paint to help designate parking spaces. Has this introspective look at the accessibility of your business changed your mind? Are you still convinced that you have a business that is meeting the needs of people with disabilities? If yes, then, good for you! If not, hopefully this will have given you food for thought — that people with disabilities are relying on you to create an environment that is accessible and welcoming. After all, this target population has $25 billion in spending dollars, a portion of which could make its way to your business — or perhaps down the street to a business that has truly met the needs of people with disabilities as customers. If you are considering building a new facility or renovating an existing one, make sure that the architect and/or contractor you use has knowledge about people with disabilities. Do not rely on him/her to automatically consider all the needs of the disability community, but be aware you are the one who will have to live with that decision. Sterling Frazer Associates works with businesses to evaluate their facilities to ensure that the environment they offer is accessible to people with disabilities. Our staff will work with you to evaluate your existing facilities or work with you in the planning stages of creating your new or renovated business environment. Remember, fixing the mistakes after your grand opening will be far more costly, and the press of opening an inaccessible business will be hard to overcome. |
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| This article, entitled Wasting Money on the Disability Community has been reprinted from Sterling Frazer Associates A+ Customer Service newsletter (Fall, 2006) |