For most able-bodied people, “accessibility” is just a word, but for people with disabilities it is a lifeline. It guarantees that there is a space that can accommodate them and that they are welcomed there. However, that isn’t always guaranteed.
People with disabilities are the fastest growing minority group in the United States. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was first signed into law in 1990, prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities in all areas of public life. The law ensures equal opportunities, reasonable accommodations and requires accessibility in buildings that are enforced by the ADA Standards for Accessible Design. While facility executives strive to ensure that the buildings stay up to code, the actions of building occupants can deter from achieving that goal.
For example, it is not uncommon to find paper towels near the doorway in restrooms due to people opening the door with them and having nowhere to throw them out. To avoid any tripping hazards, cleaning and maintenance teams have placed trash cans in the maneuvering area of the doorway, fully blocking space for any wheelchair users to get into the restroom.
“They (staff) don’t understand that the empty space is intentional for somebody who has to get out of the way of the door opening,” says Joan Stein, president of Stein Consulting, a firm focused on ADA compliance. “It’s the perfect example of something that’s not necessarily built into the environment, but is added and it is equally problem, but in other respects what facility managers need to pay attention to.”
Restrooms are the one room in buildings that are guaranteed to be used by anyone who steps foot in the building. They need to be designed and maintained with that in mind.
“When we talk about accessibility in general, people tend to think about wheelchair users, but it may be auditory, it may be vision, it may be behavioral or emotional,” says Javier Esteban, principal at Lawrence Group. “One thing that is very important from an equity and diversity standpoint is you don’t want to create ghettos. You don’t want to say, ‘Oh yes, the first floor is the accessible floor.’ There needs to be an accessible restroom on every floor in every building.”
With the range of disabilities being so widespread, it is up to facility managers to ensure that restrooms remain accessible. Stein recommends creating a quick “cheat sheet” so areas can readily be maintained. The list can include:
Meeting ADA standards and codes can often come with a hefty price tag. Finding a cheap solution isn’t always the most accommodating.
“We see baby changing tables in restrooms all the time because parents were tired of having to change diapers out in public,” Stein says. “So, they had to put them (changing tables) in both men’s and women’s restrooms. I was in a restaurant where they literally brought a baby changing table from their home and put it in a small toilet room. It was literally a piece of furniture. It not only did not meet the requirements for the baby changing table, but it used up all the clear floor space that was intended to be able to get to the toilet.”
Restroom fixtures can also become easily inaccessible. People with visual disabilities may not know how to access touchless fixtures, potentially causing slip hazards. In addition, the center line of the toilet needs to be 18 inches from the side of the wall with the flush valve on the wide side, according to the codes and standards. This can easily be incorrectly measured, but some devices allow for leeway due to piping and the plumbing. Meanwhile, facilities that have public showers can be more cumbersome to fix. Esteban explains that there are two types of accessible showers, rolling and transfer. A transfer shower is 3 feet by 3 feet. These showers need to have a 1 foot-clear beyond that to allow wheelchair users to transfer from their chair into a seat with a half an inch threshold for leg room. Meanwhile, rolling showers are 30 inches by 60 inches and are designed to accommodate a special wheelchair. Users can go all the way in and transfer into a seat, so the threshold for legroom is a quarter of an inch.
“The problem that happens with the transfer and rolling showers is that you don’t have a big threshold to hold the water in the shower when you’re showering,” Esteban says. “There’s always a lot of water that goes out of the shower and into the restroom, so you’ll want to put a floor drain in the bathroom to take the excess water they can get out so nobody slips and falls. From the maintenance standpoint, that is something you always need to be a little more careful about.”
Currently, ADA guidelines say that if you are renovating less than 50 percent of a room you only have to have accessibility in those areas that you are renovating related to the percentages, but if you are renovating more than 50 percent, then the whole building needs to be upgraded to full ADA standards. Knowing this, Esteban recommends taking the empathetic approach to designing restrooms.
He explains that when you put yourself into someone else’s shoes, you’re able to notice things that are commonly missed. For example, it is common in a university residence hall restroom to see toilet stalls on one side of the room separated by sinks before eventually reaching the showers. However, putting all the fixtures in one stall not only allows for privacy, but also for easy access to everything at once.
“Every ADA (standard) talks about the path from the corridor all the way to the bathroom,” Esteban says. “In facilities like residence halls, we need to provide an accessible route from the point of entering the door (to the restroom) all the way to the bedrooms because you need to have the concept of visit-ability. You need to be able to go visit your friends and be able to use the restroom in one corridor.”
For Stein, good design, aesthetics and ADA do not have to be mutually exclusive. There’s no reason to not have a pleasant experience while using the restroom if there is a well thought out design.
“Teaching housekeeping and maintenance staff and putting it into their regular routine to do these walkthrough checks to make sure nothing is obstructing accessibility,” Stein says. “The bottom line is that when someone places a garbage can in the maneuvering clearance or if a fixture wasn’t built into that restroom, it’s still a barrier and there will be a complaint. Sure, somebody could always move it, but what if they can’t use their arms or legs? They can’t. We need to keep other people in mind.”
Mackenna Moralez is the managing editor of the facilities market and the host of the Facilities in Focus podcast.
