Barrier-free design - making the environment accessible to the disabled

BRIAN B.RUB.

Imagine a building without an elevator and without stairs. How would you get to a meeting on, say, the third floor? Imagine an elevator without numbers on the floor buttons. Could you locate the button for the floor you want? Unrealistic? No. These are problems faced daily by Canada's more than 2 million disabled people. It's a simple matter of access getting to where you want to go. The disabled find an enormous number of architectural barriers that prevent access. Being denied access often means being denied employment, transportation and a place to live. One of the greatest myths, says Patricia Falta, a Montreal architect specializing in design for the disabled and herself a paraplegic, is that disabled people want special

facilities or environments built just for them. Although some facilities must be adapted, designers often overcompensate and produce unnecessary features which make everyone uncomfortable and that ultimately prevent the disabled from becoming valid and useful citizens.
Becoming normal

The disabled are handicapped only to the extent that they are prevented from being normal. This process of normalization, says Ms. Falta, is hampered by both attitudinal and physical barriers. Physical barriers make life difficult for the disabled. Consider the home - coping with daily routines such as cooking, making a bed, doing the laundry, using the wash-

room; consider transportation finding a way to get to work, to go shopping, to live a reasonably normal life; consider trying to cope with a working environment designed with only the able-bodied in mind. Barrier-free design is not architecture specifically for the disabled. It's simply design that takes into account the wide range of potential users of a building - the temporarily or chronically disabled, the elderly, children, and indeed, the able-bodied making deliveries, carrying groceries, pushing a baby carriage or moving furniture. Many countries have taken steps to integrate the disabled into society. In Britain, the government passed the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act in 1970 which insures that housing for the

Architect Arthur Erikson has incorporated a wheelchair ramp into the stair design at Vancouver's Robson square.
68 CMA JOURNAL/JANUARY 1, 1981/VOL. 124

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Working drawing by Public Works Canada to add a ramp to an existing post office.

disabled is both available and accessible and also provides for financial assistance in modifying individual environments. Denmark and Sweden have enacted similar legislation. In the late I 950s in Holland, the government assisted in constructing a village for 400 severely disabled people.
Responsible for themselves

Sweden, however, emerges as the leader in concern for the disabled. Their Fokus Society has the philosophy that the disabled must assume responsibility for themselves. Toward that end, they help integrate the disabled into society by finding rental apartments within housing developments for the general public and assist in modifying them. Fokus Society workers then help out around the home for a few hours each day. The major design considerations in a Fokus apartment are in the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. All fittings, including sinks, and cupboards, are vertically adjustable.

in Canada, a committee on the disabled recommended in 1965 that the National Building Code of Canada should be modified to provide for accessibility for the disabled. The National Research Council then published a set of guidelines as supplement No. 5. But, the supplement and, in fact, the building code are merely guidelines - they're not legally binding on anyone. The codes with clout are those enacted by provincial and municipal governments. Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia, for instance, have building codes that require buildings to be accessible to the disabled, as do some municipalities. But only some.
Quebec legislation

Quebec has gone a step further. That government has passed legislation "to ensure handicapped persons the full and equal recognition and exercise of the rights and freedoms shared by all citizens. "This bill provides various measures designed to ensure the educational vocational and social inte-

gration of the handicapped persons. "This bill also amends various existing laws, in particular the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, to provide that there is to be no discrimination of any sort on the grounds that he is handicapped or uses any devices as a palliative to his handicap. In 1973 the federal Treasury Board asked Public Works Canada to adopt supplement No. 5 of the National Building Code of Canada as a design guideline for all new federal buildings and in major renovations. In 1978, Robert Andras, then president of the Treasury Board, squarely addressed the problem of accessibility for the disabled and said that there must be more employment opportunity in the Public Service for the disabled. Public Works Canada examined what would have to be done and made a proposal to make all existing federal buildings accessible by 1983 at a cost of $20 million. Supplement No. 5 was judged inadequate, however, and Public Works adopted a new code based on that

74 CMA JOURNAL/JANUARY 1, 1981/VOL. 124

For prescribing information see page

of British Columbia and the American National Standards Code. Their new standard provides for comprehensive access - that is, access to all office areas, including copiers, meeting rooms, cafeterias and libraries - for all new construction and for all existing large buildings. Smaller buildings would have basic access - access to all main floor public areas, access from parking or transit systems and access to washrooms, telephones and elevators. But these are federal government buildings. What about the rest? Whether a building has to be accessible depends on the local

regulations. Some municipalities have a building code that requires it. Many don't. The province may, the municipality may not. According to Jean-Remi Champagne, an architect with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, this leads to a tangled web. A particular building in a community may be accessible to the disabled but the community in general is not. No one, he says, is getting an overall look. Champagne feels that barrier-free design often gets only lip-service and plans to attempt to sort out reality from rules. He will study existing legislation in all provinces

How accessible is your office? Considering that all disabled people, whether temporarily or permanently so, must visit their physician at one time or another, his office must be accessible. But is it? Is yours? * Is there public parking, with spaces 12 feet wide, reasonably close to your office? * Can a person find a path without steps, curbs and narrow doorways from the parking area to your office? * Are there double doors at the entry that might trap a person in a wheelchair? * Could an elderly person, with minimal strength and poor eyesight, open the front door and read the directory? * Are other facilities such as public telephones, washrooms and pharmacies accessible to a person in a wheelchair and do telephones have a volume control for those with impaired hearing? * Can a person in a wheelchair, or a child, reach the elevator buttons and can a blind person tell what floor the elevator is stopping at? * Are the signs identifying your office clear and does the door have a lever-type handle that can be easily grasped?

and then propose new solutions, new legislation, a sensible, integrated approach to making all Canadian communities barrier-free. The bottom line is, of course, attitude. Don Henning, an architect with Public Works Canada actively involved in their "total accessibility by '83" project and author of several publications on barrier-free design, says that making a new building accessible to the disabled involves no extra cost. The architect simply designs differently - avoiding features that would be barriers to the disabled. Perhaps we should hope that the impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons will be felt in the schools of architecture. "As architects, we were taught to play with levels when designing", says Patricia Falta, "but when you play with levels you must consider stairs or some way of getting people from one level to the next." Now, in spite of barrier-free design, we still teach architects to play with levels, she says. Colour and texture But it's not only levels. It's colour and texture. Doors, signs and walkways of contrasting colours are a help to the partially-sighted. Rounded corners instead of square would help the blind and those in wheelchairs. With respect for their rights, with some thought to removing barriers to their independence, disabled people will be able to prove that they are really not handicapped.u

CMAJ retrospect
"Society can find or make a place for its handicapped citizens which will provide an opportunity for them to make their best contribution to the world in which they live. Although an individual's inheritance cannot (as yet, at least) be altered, his environment can." - CMAJ, October 1964