5 insanely disabled access standards: 1 of 5 Braille Signage Growing acceptance around building law is key to improving compliance outcomes, but its a hard task to get acceptance when a law baffles logic, costs money, time and reduces our capacity to get the job done. Let’s tackle the top 5 codes that undermine all good intentions to improve project outcomes for people with disabilities. No. 1 Braille signage on toilet doors Braille signage ranks as the number one defunct access standard for reason of its prevalence and financial cost for no known community benefit. The science Best...
Access to Premises Standard or just Premises Standard is the abridged name for the Disability Access to Premises (Building) Standard 2010 document referenced within the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act of 1992 (DDA). The Premises Standard is intended to give greater legal weight to the provisions for disability access within the Building Code of Australia (BCA), and in practice, the Premises Standard mutually recognises the BCA and Visa Versa, meaning that compliance with the BCA is to comply with the DDA. Premises Standards History Immediately following the introduction of the...
Have the Australian Standards become a design Crutch? It's of great concern to us to see architects leaning on building codes and standards as architectural templates instead of their own imagination and creativity. Any decent self respecting species on the planet knows that diversity is the key to survival so what's the evolutionary advantage of standardising design? It didn't work for Mao Zedong or Stalin and there's no evidence that stifling evolution will work for us and there's every reason to motivate our designers to innovate solutions to today's lifestyle problems. When to...
Peninsula News - 17 Mar 2014 Boarding house objections may deny human rights Objections to a new boarding house proposed for Ettalong may result in a denial of human rights, according to the author of a new housing standard which rates housing for affordability and accessibility to work and other services. Mr Richard Brew, author of the Annex-5 housing standard, said that a failure to provide adequate housing was a failure to protect human rights. "Rejecting housing development without solid justification is at odds with the natural right to a home," he said. He said groups...
Any stairstep falls or even falls on the same level in public building should be taken seriously for reason that they never occur in isolation and the probability of more serious falls increases with time. We usually become involved in stairstep falls claims following a fall or near miss. If you've had a stairstep fall or have a business premises with problem staircase or ramps then we advise to follow up with a stair audit to identify the problem and take advice on fall prevention and control strategies. It's important to note that stairstep falls are rarely the fault of person or...
Workplaces often require areas greater than the AS 1428 access standard series and we're often asked about ramps within workplaces and Designers WHS 2012 duty of care which is reason for this guide note. The dimensions in AS 1428.1 were initially based on studies by J. Bails, Project report on the field testing of the Australian Standard 1428-1977 Part 1 and 2, Public Building Department of South Australia, 1983. It's important to remember that Bails research analysed the anthropometry of wheeled mobility users which is similar but different to workplace needs. While there's...
Annex: a Universal Design Standard Annex is a process centered Universal Design standard, which is different to other template-based universal standard. It is necessary, especially in public places, to have generic facilities that meet most people’s needs most of the time or universal design. Yet relying on templates alone will lead to one-size-fits-all outcomes or over design, compliance gridlock if the template will not fit the building and a reliance on the standard for situations where it was not intended such as home modifications to address a person’s individual disability or...
WHS in the home The general exemption for homes, dwellings, units apartments, houses. It’s a moot question whether a home is a workplace and therefore required to be safe and accessible. The community like to think of our house as a home and not a workplace and this is reflected in the exemption of most freestanding houses from the Premises Standards. There may be an issue in housing when a house becomes a workplace or an apartment building with accommodation and communal areas. However, generally speaking, the Premises standards doesn't extend to single dwellings, townhouses or...
"In the Tribunal's view what is required by the conflict of interest standard is a separation of the consultancy role and the certification role sufficient to satisfy a reasonably-informed member of the general public that there is no likelihood that the accredited certification might be influenced by the performance of the consultancy role and might lack the necessary objectivity."." Conflict of interest Justin Cotton, Partner and Head of Practitioner Advocacy at Lovegrove Solicitors has penned an article on the practice of acting as both consultant/advisor and as a public regulatory...