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Door Maneuvering Clearances Template

Here is the template (downloadable) that John Salmen and Andy Yarrish handed out at their session at the AIA Convention in San Francisco and the Architecture Exchange in Richmond.

Internships Available

Universal Designers & Consultants Inc. is offereing internships throughout the year. Click here for details.

AIA CEU Online Course Now Available
The New ADA Standards: What You Need to Know

Universal Designers & Consultants Inc. has developed a training program to teach architects and designers about the 2004 ADAAG.
The course cost of the course is $35. It is worth 1.0 CEU.

To take the course click here. After you have completed the course and worksheet, send the worksheet and payment ($35) to Universal Designers & Consultants Inc.
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July 23, 2009
References/links for John Salmen's AIAS presentation

Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau

http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Evolution-Promise-Enhancing-Bodies/dp/0385509650#reader

The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil

http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1

Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future by James Hughes

http://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Cyborg-Democratic-Societies-Redesigned/dp/0813341981#reader

Census link

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/013041.html

The Do-Able Renewable Home

Designers with Disabilities Network -- join or benefit from their perspectives at www.accesstodesign.org or www.careersindesign.org

Exploring the Complexity of Compliance

If the Department of Justice (DOJ) comes knocking on your door in response to a complaint that one of your public restrooms lacked adequate floor space, be prepared for a full scale Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) evaluation of your facility, according a speaker at the AIA Convention in San Francisco.
In its investigation, DOJ doesn’t have to limit itself to only the features identified in the complaint, said Trevor Ashbarry, an attorney with McShane & Lee PC, Washington, DC, who spoke during an AIA session entitled “The Complexity of ADA Compliance.”
Ashbarry spoke of unsettling realities for businesses, court decisions and general trends that are defining architects and designers responsibilities when it comes to ADA compliance.
With the challenge of compliance defined, architects Harold Kiewel and John Salmen offered some ideas on how to create compliance strategies.
Among the suggestions from Kiewel, with HMC Architects in San Diego, was to seek out designers with disabilities as “expert users”.
“Today for legal, moral, sustainability and many other reasons, our designer’s eye must be informed from an access perspective,” said Kiewel. He offered a number of sources to find such perspective, including:
The Institute for Human Centered Design (formerly known as Adaptive Environments) which hosts a list-serve for designers with disabilities.
Independent Living Centers (ICLs) are consumer-controlled, community-based, non-residential, non-profit organizations that provide services and advocacy to help people with disabilities live, self-directed lives. They often provide outreach and disability awareness programs to the public, as well as consumers with disabilities. Independent living centers can be found across the country. (www.ncil.org or www.ilusa.com)
Local AIA Society or Chapters offer various types of professional directories – one of which may sort members into specialties, i.e., accessibility, universal design, or ADA consultants/experts.
Salmen encouraged those in attendance to try to understand user expectations. “Expectations change depending on the setting,” he said. “How well do you expect to hear in a Nightclub? Do you expect marble finish material in a campground shower? What do you expect when you visit a sculpture gallery or a children’s museum?”
Through universal design, anticipated user expectations choices can be provided. “It is a process that focuses on the user’s perspective,” he said.
He described a new LEED-like universal design process being developed by the Global Universal Design Commission (GUDC). The standard, which is currently being drafted, will help those involved in the design of environments to consider users and their expectations.

Profile of Architect Harold Kiewel

'Where There is Exclusion, There is Discrimination'

One Architect’s Message to the Profession

By Denise McGiffin Hofstedt, Editor, Universal Design Newsletter

A life long advocate for accessibility and promoter of universal design for more than 25 years, Harold Kiewel, AIA, CSI, CCA, has made it his mission to educate architects about the greater implications of designing spaces that are not accessible to all users.
Speaking in a way that is neither preachy nor judgmental, Kiewel has been quietly saying for years that until every member of a community is able to access every facility within that community, there is segregation. Accessibility is simply a matter of social justice. Architects must design for diverse populations.
Kiewel, currently a senior architectural specifier with Ellerbe Becket Inc., in Minneapolis, MN, has nearly 30 years of experience in the field of accessible design. He holds an undergraduate degree in psychology and a masters degree in architecture. He has a variety of related experience including: working in the field of home modification; training disability advocates on the requirements of the then newly introduced
Minnesota accessibility code; working for the Minnesota code agency; and working in the state’s Department of Labor and Industry on workers compensation awards for people injured on the job.
“I knew Harold’s work well before I knew him,” says Elaine Ostroff, founding director of The Adaptive Environments Center. “He helped create the extremely useful home modification fact sheets that I used in the early 80s when we were beginning our work to support home modifications in Massachusetts. He was working with the Minnesota Housing & Finance Agency then. The agency was among the first - if not the first - to make home mods part of its work.”
According to Ostroff, Kiewel is a “straight ahead guy” who has been quietly working on making the playing field level for more than two decades. “He’s not a self-promoter; he pushes himself harder than he pushes other people. His work has contributed to the bedrock of accessibility experience and knowledge that underlie the regulations and their implementation,” she says. “In the mid 80s, his master’s thesis debunked the myth of the average user. He was ahead of the curve in articulating the need for a more universal approach to design.”
Social Justice
She notes that he has strong beliefs about social justice and the rights of each person to fully participate as a member of the community. Kiewel’s message is simple: “Where there is an exclusion, there is discrimination.” To illustrate his point, he tells the story of accompanying his daughter, years ago, in a quest to sell Girl Scout cookies. Kiewel, who uses a wheelchair, recalls the unease of watching his 10-year-old daughter climb a flight of stairs to knock on a stranger’s door as he waited on the sidewalk below.
“It is my contention that accessible or universal design is not an altruistic principle, but an obligation; a charge and a challenge to the profession that we must rise to meet,” said Kiewel,
in a “Designing for Diversity” presentation at the 2003 American Institute of Architects (AIA) National Convention. “We can not sacrifice commodity for delight’s sake. Architecture-for architecture’s sake has gone far enough – far enough to challenge the very viability of the profession. We must return to the fundamentals, and remember that good architecture has firmness, commodity and delight.”
His AIA presentation marked a victory for Kiewel, who had worked for more than a decade to persuade AIA to reframe its code-centered discussions of accessibility and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to focus on the broader issue of disability as a form of diversity.
Enlightening the Profession
In his efforts to promote accessibility to architects and design professionals, Kiewel served on the AIA-Minnesota committee that developed the Access Maze, a full-scale model of the ADA Standards for Accessible Design. The maze, which was built of wood, was constructed to the minimum standards and set up at several AIA conferences. Individuals could personally experience the restrictive minimum dimensions by using a wheelchair to navigate the maze’s ramp slopes, bathroom transfers and fixture reach ranges.
Form Ahead of Function
The desire to remedy a common “disconnect” in the profession continues to drive Kiewel to share his knowledge and experience with other architecture professionals.
“There is a dilemma in the profession about how people use space,” he says. “The focus is on form and design and there is not a clear understanding of people in the environment.”
Architectural magazines with pictures of people-free interiors support his idea that the profession puts form ahead of function.
He recalls an architect once complained of having trouble understanding accessibility regulations because there were “no pictures.”
“There are lots and lots of pictures in the [Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility
Guidelines] – but they are of people, not space. Professionals are not embracing human performance issues,” says Kiewel. He applauds the ADA for at least waking architects up to accessibility issues. “But the profession still sees it as a code issue, not a design opportunity,” he says.
There is a limited understanding of basic accessibility among architects. He says it would be better if architects understood the fundamentals of why and what makes a space useable. According to Kiewel, “A 36”x 36” shower only works when it is 36” x 36”. If architects understood the human element then they would not be designing 40” x 60” showers — where you can’t reach the shower controls from the bench.” But as much as he has spoken to groups of professionals, Kiewel finds teachable moments in his own office. One of his self-appointed tasks at Ellerbe Becket is to keep designers grounded in “physical realities.”
While preparing construction documents for a women’s and children’s health center, Kiewel suggested reducing the diameter of the railing in the elevator cars from 3 inches to 1 ½ inches. The designers protested that the thicker railing would “look better.”
“I asked, ‘Is this a handrail or a design element?,” he says. “If you anticipate that people, especially women and children, may use this rail for balance and support then it had better be a comfortable size for people’s hands….” Kiewel prevailed and to his satisfaction the firm won a design award for the project — even with the skinny handrails.

Clearing Up Clear Widths

The Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG) 4.3.3 indicates that an accessible route is required to be 36 inches wide minimum “except at doors” which appears to contradict paragraph 4.2.1, paragraph A4.2.1, and Fig. 1
ADAAG 4.2.1, and Fig. 1 of the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design (ADASAD) require the minimum clear width for wheelchair passage to be “32 inches at a point and 36 inches continuously.” The appendix section A4.2.1 explains the rationale behind these numbers and ends by stating, “… when an opening or a restriction in a passageway is more than 24 inches long, it is essentially a passageway and must be at least 36 inches wide.”
Paragraph 403.5 of the new Americans with Disabilities Act/Architectural Barriers Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADA/ABA-AG) and ICC/ANSI A117.1 Standard for Accessible and Useable Buildings and Facilities 2003 allows the 32 inches minimum clear width to occur anywhere, as long as the restricted width is no more than 24 inches long and is separated by a distance of at least 48 inches (the length of a wheelchair clear floor space) from the next restriction. In other words, 32 inch minimum clear width does not exclusively apply to clear width at accessible doors.
For example, this would allow columns to reduce the clear width of grocery store aisles, or parking meters to reduce clear widths for short distances

Figure 403.5.1 Clear Width of an Accessible Route
Source: Americans with Disabilities Act/Architectural Barriers Act Accessibility Guidelines

This is an exerpt from Universal Design Newsletter’s “Aha! Moments.” Accessibility experts know that no one knows it all. Those in the field occasionally come across technical accessibility criteria anomalies that evoke an “Aha! Moment.” This column seeks to identify those surprising criteria and present opinions as to their intent. We welcome your discoveries as well. If you have comments or other examples of strange things you have found in the technical standards that made you scratch your head or otherwise change your mind -- send them to us.

New NYC Construction Codes Signed into Law

On July 3, 2007, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed the new New York City Construction Codes into law. The new codes, which go into effect July 1, 2008, have been in the works for several years and are based on the 2003 version of the International Building Code and the 2003 ICC/ANSI A117.1 Standard on Accessible and Useable Buildings and Facilities. Major updates to the prior New York City building code ocurred in 1968 and 1938.
According to a report issued by the NYC Department of Buildings, the new provisions in the code will bring New York City into sync with Federal mandates that address the needs of people with disabilities. “At one point in time, the city was at the forefront of accessibility standards, but the accessibility regulations in the current building code have not been updated since 1987. Since that time, the rest of the country has surpassed New York City, especially with the passage of Federal laws such as the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.”
At a bill signing ceremony, Bloomberg said, “This bill delivers on a campaign promise I made in 2001 to update the current building code, which was last revised comprehensively in 1968. Because building codes govern a critical part of the City’s infrastructure, it is essential that the minimum standards they establish mirror the very latest in design and construction technology. [The new codes] will enhance safety by mandating sprinklers in more buildings, requiring fire alarms in more occupancies, updating structural integrity requirements, and improving construction safety.” The mayor noted the new codes will be reviewed every three years.
The conflicts between the older New York City laws and the current Federal laws have led to confusion among professionals and the public as to the applicability of various standards and the ability to enforce them. The report notes that to resolve conflicts and ensure dignified access to buildings for people with disabilities, the code:
• Includes most requirements found in the current Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG).
• Provides specifications that are necessary for the installation of assistive listening systems.
• Harmonizes accessibility requirements of the current local law and federal law that are applicable to occupancies containing dwelling and sleeping units.
• Provides innovative and flexible solutions to address the technical and accessibility requirements of toilet and bathing facilities in multiple dwelling residential occupancies.
• Allows Limited-Use/Limited-Application (LULA) elevators, a type of vertical transportation that is safer and more accessible than a vertical wheelchair lift, in non-residential buildings.