0207 MIDATLANTIC ADA1
ACCESSIBILITY AND THE ADA:
FACILITY STANDARDS UPDATE
FEBRUARY 7, 2012
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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> MARIAN VESSELS: The broadcast is now starting, all attendees are in listenonly mode.
(Pause.)
> MARIAN VESSELS: Good among and afternoon to everyone, and welcome to the MidAtlantic ADA series on the new ADA 2010 standards. My name is Marian Vessels and I'll be serving as the moderator for this series. Today's session is titled Accessibility in the ADA. Facility Standards Update.
We are privileged to be joined by Nancy Horton. I will introduce her shortly.
This is the second of a 3part series. If you've got been able to join us for the first one, please feel free to go online and look at the archived version of session one and be updated so that you'll be ready to roll for the third session.
And if any of your colleagues have missed this one, this session will be archived by the end of the week as well.
Individuals are joining us today using the telephone, audio feed through the computer, and real time captioning.
If you need captioning, please refer to your email for information on how to open the captioning screen.
Individuals may also view today's PowerPoint presentation online.
The URL will be in the chat room for you to review, if you did and get your email.
Our presenter today will provide us with some valuable information. And during her presentation, there will be several opportunities to ask questions.
You can ask your questions in the chat room on your screen to the right. And I will then be asking your questions to Nancy.
Depending on the number of questions we get, we may not be able to address all of your issues or concerns today.
We encourage you to follow up with questions to your regional ADA Center at 8009494232.
Let me begin today's session by reintroducing Nancy Horton to you. She's an information specialist with the MidAtlantic ADA Center. She has nearly 25years of experience in the disability field, including working as an accessibility specialist at centers for independent living and providing consultations in architectural plans reviews for Eastlake, Derry and Associates. I'll now turn the program over to Nancy.
> NANCY HORTON: Thank you, thank you, so much, Marian, and welcome, everyone. Thank you, all, for joining us this afternoon. As Marian said, we are going to continue today with Part two of our three part series on the facilities standards update, all about the new 2010 ADA standards.
Today we're going to be talking about Chapters 3 through 7. We are going to get into the technical specification chapters in a little more depth.
Moving on to Slide Number 2, just going to have a brief look at today's agenda. The chapters that we're going to be talking about, chapters three is the building blocks chapter. Chapter 4 is all about accessible routes, Chapter 5 is general site and building elements. Chapter 6 is all about plumbing. And Chapter 7 is about several different types of communication elements, and as Marian said, we will have a couple of opportunities throughout our session to stop and try to respond to some of your questions.
We are now, this is a brief overview. We are only going to be able to hit some of the highlights of the new standards. Our timeframe doesn't allow us to go into a lot of depth. And we are for the most part focusing on what's new and different about the 2010 standards.
So we are assuming some familiarity with the 1991 standards, but if you have question you know, questions about the '91 standards, or basic questions, you know, feel free to ask those as well.
So we're going to jump right into talking a little bit about Chapter three, the building blocks chapter.
On Slide Number 4, you'll see a list of the sections that are within Chapter 3, some of the chapter some of the sections in this chapter talk about floor and ground surfaces changes in level, turning space, clear floor and ground space, knee and toe clearances, protruding objects, reach ranges, and operable parts.
So as you can see, these are all some of the basic components of accessibility. And you'll find that a lot of other sections and chapters throughout the standard will refer back to these building blocks.
On Slide Number five, you'll see some some illustrations here that represent a subtle change between the '91 and the 2010 standards.
This is really almost more of a clarification than really a new provision.
The language of the text in the 1991 standards really made it sound like you could do what the 2010 standards are much more specific about allowing, but you'll see in these figures that under the 1991 standards, they describe this quarter inch vertical change in level and then a change in level that's up to a half an inch that's shown as beveled the entire distance of that change in level.
The illustration from the 2010 standards shows how you can use essentially a combination approach to overcome this change in level of a half an inch, where the first quarter of an inch can be vertical, and the next quarter of an inch can be beveled, so that's a kind of a combination approach that's specified in the 2010 standards.
On our next Slide, on Slide Number 6, we see a change that's represented in the 2010 standards in the building blocks chapter.
They have a section that talks about knee and toe clearance requirements.
And it's got some subtle differences from the 1991 standards, where the knee and toe clearances were basically specified in a number of various sections throughout the standards, wherever they were relevant to drinking fountains or lavatories or other elements.
In the 2010 standards, you'll find that all of these other sections where knee and toe clearance is relevant are going to refer back to this building blocks section, where knee and toe clearances are defined.
And you'll notice that the this old 29inch clearance underneath the lavatory apron is going to vanish with 2010.
All knee clearances are now the same. With a 27inch minimum, regardless of the type of element that we're talking about, whether it's a lavatory, a work surface, a drinking fountain, it's all going to be the same now. It's going to come back to this building blocks section.
On the next slide, Number 7, you'll see that this is this is a pretty significant change. The 1991 standards allowed us to have a high reach range of 54inches for elements that could be approached and reached from the side.
This has been lowered now to 48inches in the 2010 standards. There's no more distinction between the reach range for elements that you approach forward or elements that you approach from the side.
So the high range of 54 and that low range of nine inches is going away with tent ten. It's going to be the 48inches on the high side, 15inches on the low side, regardless of approach. And there is a nice advisory sections in the 2010 standards for children's reach ranges based on different age groups. We talked about that a little bit last week. So there's good information in the new standards about that, for the design of children's spaces.
On our next slide we just see an illustration of the reach range.
This is the unobstructed forward reach range, 48inches on the high side, 15inches on the low side.
Now we're going to jump into our next slide, we're going to talk a little bit about some highlights in Chapter 4, which is about accessible routes.
On our next slide you'll see, this is slide number ten, some of the things that we're going to talk about, the components of accessible routes, including walking surfaces, doors, doorways and gates, ramps and curb ramps, elevators, limited use, limited application elevators or LULAs, private residence elevators and both of these things are new newly addressed in the 2010 standards, as well as platform lifts.
And on our next slide, Number 11, we see that there's a new exception in the 2010 standards for accessible routes from site arrival points and within sites where the only means of access is by vehicle. And if you're familiar with the 1991 standards you may remember that they basically read as if you had to provide a pedestrian route within a site from points like public right of way to the entrance of the facility.
And this turned out to be problematic in some instances where developed sites were remote or for whatever reason. There was really nothing at the edge of those sites to really connect to, because everybody who came there to that facility was really coming by vehicle.
And so there's this new exception that allows you to not have to create a pedestrian route out to the edge of a site where no pedestrians are really arriving there.
You're still going to have to, of course, connect things like parking or bus stops or passenger loading zones, where those things are provided on our next slide we have also some new exceptions related to accessible routes between stories within buildings, and these new exceptions are related to certain types of multistory buildings including twostory public buildings, and these would be state and local government buildings where the one story has an occupant load of five or fewer people and no public use space on that second story. That public entity is allowed to not have to provide an accessible route to that to that story.
There's an exception for detention and correctional facilities. That's jails and prisons, for residential facilities, and for multistory accessible transient lodging guest rooms, these are hotel rooms, motel rooms. An accessible route is not required to stories that don't contain accessible spaces or elements that serve accessible spaces and this is a very narrow exception. It's important to really recognize that the exception related to hotel rooms is related to individual mobilityaccessible multistory guest rooms.
It's where the room, itself, is multistory. It's not an exception for the whole facility.
You can't build a fourstory hotel and not put vertical access in there just by putting all of your accessible rooms and all of your accessible common areas and all of your accessible elements that serve your accessible spaces on the ground floor.
You can't do that.
It's only for within a multistory guest room. And it also depends on there being sleeping accommodations for at least two people available on the accessible level of that of that guest room.
So it's a pretty narrow exception.
There's also an exception for air traffic control towers, for the cab and the floor below it, so that the air traffic controllers can maintain their 360degree field of view, which we we like them to have.
And it's also important to note that these exceptions are only related to the routes to the stories, not for the spaces or elements on the stories.
This is not much different from what we had with the '91 standards where you did have some exceptions for vertical access.
It's, you know, the socalled elevator exemption doesn't exempt the accessibility of any spaces or elements that are on those those levels.
If you have a you know, you build a brand new toilet room on the level where there's no elevator to that, to that level, you still have to make the toilet room accessible.
So, again, a very narrow exception.
On our next slide, Number 13, we have, again, some new new and revised exceptions.
This first exception about courtrooms, you know, courtrooms are newly addressed in the new standards. We have specifications now that are specific to courtrooms.
And the socalled adaptability is allowed for raised courtroom employee stations.
This is only for employee stations.
So this is going to be your judge's bench, your court reporter's station, your bailiff's station, things of that nature, that may be raised. This is not for raised areas where the public would go, which includes jury boxes, witness stands, and attorney areas.
Sometimes folks get a little confused about this. Sometimes attorneys work for the public entity whose courthouse it is, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes attorneys are, you know, they're not really considered employees.
So that those attorney areas, those are public considered public areas. So those areas need to be fully accessible.
Adaptability in this context really means that the space, the maneuvering space, and potentially electrical service, needs to be provided during construction to allow for later installation of some means of vertical access, whether it be a ramp, or platform lift, or what have you.
The space and the support needs to be builtin. So that if that employee area ever needs to become accessible, it can be easily done.
We also have some new exceptions related to press boxes. You have to have access to press boxes unless they are located in bleachers and the aggregate area of it is 500square feet maximum. Also, if you have a freestanding press box that's elevated above grade, at least 12feet, and the aggregate area of all the press boxes in the facility, 500square feet maximum, again, so those are some new new exceptions.
We have some new provisions for circulation pathways through employee work areas, which generally need to be accessible, unless they are located in areas that are less than 1,000 square feet, and they're defined by permanently installed partitions, counters, case work or furnishings, or they're located in areas that are integral to work equipment, or they're located in exterior areas that are exposed to the weather.