12 ms·

This looks to be about as 1984 as ADA is. This whole thing appears to be an accessibility issue.

by mhurron 13y ago

jerf 13y ago
Specifying it for all government or public construction is ADA-ish. Specifying it for private residences is more in the 1984 direction. I say "in the direction" because no, I don't think this is a boot stomping into our face, forever. But it is heavy handed. Hardly unprecedented, of course. Pushing out "accessibility" requirements into the general home market is something we've not done for good reason; it's an expense incurred quite widely for little societal benefit, unlike public spaces. We can't afford to make every residence everywhere handicapped-accessible, childproofed, elderly-appropriate, etc etc. Private residences do have variance due to the variances in people.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  I don't know the intricacies of Canadian code enforcement, but in the US building codes for private homes are only relevant at a few points: New construction, substantial renovation, certain not-wholly-private use cases, and certain types of financing when buying. New construction is where it's strictest. In a case like this, your contractor may have to install handles to pass inspection, but nothing stops you from changing them out for knobs if you want to.
  - jerf 13y ago
    "In September, Vancouver council adopted new amendments to its building code, effective next March, that, among other things, will require lever handles on all doors and lever faucets in all new housing construction." ... "Will Johnston, the former Vancouver chief building inspector who wrote the changes in consultation with the building industry, doesn’t see this as the inevitable death of the doorknob because the rules aren’t retroactive. People can also still buy doorknobs and put them back on lever handle-equipped houses."
    - minikites 13y ago
      So why is this a 1984-esque rights trampling? New houses have to have lever handles. I'm sure they also have to be wired safely. Why should someone who is disabled only have a subset of houses to choose from?
      - mortenjorck 13y ago
        Honest question: Should all new private residences be required to have ramps or elevators to be wheelchair accessible? If not, where do you draw the line?
        jtbigwoo 13y ago
        I think you could do a cost/benefit analysis on this sort of thing. How much cost does it add to a project and how much space does it take up vs. how many people benefit and what's the scale of the benefit? In the case of lever door handles or something like returns on stair railings, it's not very expensive and provides a benefit in accessibility or safety. On the other hand ramps are fairly expensive (thousands of dollars to hire a contractor to build one) and take up a lot of room (usually height:length of 1:12 or 1:16, not counting landings). Elevators are even more expensive (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars plus maintenance) and take up a fair amount of room.
        DanBC 13y ago
        I'd happily force anyone building > X new dwellings to make sure that Y% of those are wheelchair accessible, or to have other accessible features.
- sanskritabelt 13y ago
  How do you feel about low-flow toilets.
  - jerf 13y ago
    What's your question, exactly? Coercion and effect aren't intrinsically connected. Something that has a good effect might still not be worth the coercion; something coerced with the best of intentions might still not have a good effect.
    - sanskritabelt 13y ago
      Twenty years ago low flow toilets were more evidence of the heavy-handed iron fist of the Orwellian state into our every day lives.
- mturmon 13y ago
  You could spin this as safety as well as accessibility. E.g., if an older person is alone in the home and something happens. If the older person is a visitor, you might not change out the handles for them, but their safety is impacted if they can't open the doors. Other safety/accessibility regulations cover the width of doorways and the presence and specific design elements of handrails, even in private dwellings. (E.g., the handrail must be not too skinny and not too fat, and have parts on the end that turn inward and meet the wall.) There are a lot of such codes. Some of them I only know about because I built a home addition in California. Once you know about them, you start noticing these design elements on all the built structures around you. I'm not disagreeing with what you wrote! (I notice that you got a downvote, which seems weird.). Just pondering the distinction between safety and accessibility, and how you'd draw that line, and trying to think of related examples of regulations that pertain to private residences.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    I use to live in a home where the front door opened up into a staircase which went to the living area, the first floor was commercial space, not residential. What would this hypothetical elderly visitor do then? I think accessibility is fine and dandy in public spaces, but the line between accessibility and safety becomes quite clear when you begin considering private residences. There are all manner of perfectly normal objects, appliances, and situations that can become dangerous in hypothetical situations involving disabled visitors. Hell, just look at bathtubs: generally considered benign, but potential deathtraps for hypothetical elderly visitors. Nobody is likely to replace their bathtub with a no-slip walk-in bathtub just because an elderly person is visiting, should we mandate that all new structures be build with walk-in tubs? In the context of private residences, safety issues are ones that really present an equal-opportunity risk. Mandating circuit breakers is a clear-cut example of a safety issue, not an accessibility issue. Something that is done solely for the sake of the disabled is a clear-cut accessibility issue. Stair lifts, ramps, and accessible nobs are all accessibility issues. They do nothing for the safety of the general population; they should not be framed as safety issues.
jlgreco 13y ago
ADA was suppose to (figuratively speaking) build ramps, not tear down stairs. There is a theoretical threshold at which we should start considering if we have gone to far.
- derekp7 13y ago
  The argument in the article is that it is even better yet if construction can be made so that it benefits everyone without being a hindrance to anyone else. For example, many stores don't have ramps or stairs -- the store floor is at parking-lot / sidewalk level.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    If lever handles were actually preferred by everybody, then there would be no need for this legislation. Is it really a great injustice in society that somebody with poor hand dexterity might have to replace doorknobs in a newly purchased home? An injustice so great that we must mandate poor-dexterity accessible handles in all new construction? Here is an idea: if lever style handles are a medical necessity for somebody, let those devices be provided for them by the state, as other medical necessities are in Canada. What's next, installing stair lifts in every home on the off chance that an elderly person might move in? Banning stairs and requiring all new homes to have elevators instead? Are we going to start requiring that all homes that have raised floors in some rooms come with ramps pre-installed?
    - derekp7 13y ago
      From my understanding, the overall idea from the "inclusive" standardization process is if there is a choice between two things that are otherwise functionally and cost equivalent (or comparable), the inclusive item is what should be in the standard. Keep in mind that housing construction standards already have things like door height, door knob height, door width, stair tread rise/run ratios, etc. And the purpose of including new house construction in some of the standards, isn't for the benefit of the current home purchaser, but for the benefit of future owners of the dwelling, so that they have a greater selection of housing to choose from that doesn't require major retrofitting after purchase. And to further address the "banning stairs and requiring elevators" part of your comment, that falls under the Reductio ad absurdum informal logical fallacy -- that is, it isn't functionally / cost equivalent. However, I think you will notice that not to many new houses are built with only ladders connecting the various floors instead of stairs. Probably due to the current building standards.

This looks to be about as 1984 as ADA is. This whole thing appears to be an accessibility issue.

by mhurron 13y ago

This looks to be about as 1984 as ADA is. This whole thing appears to be an accessibility issue.

jerf 13y ago

Specifying it for all government or public construction is ADA-ish. Specifying it for private residences is more in the 1984 direction. I say "in the direction" because no, I don't think this is a boot stomping into our face, forever. But it is heavy handed. Hardly unprecedented, of course. Pushing out "accessibility" requirements into the general home market is something we've not done for good reason; it's an expense incurred quite widely for little societal benefit, unlike public spaces. We can't afford to make every residence everywhere handicapped-accessible, childproofed, elderly-appropriate, etc etc. Private residences do have variance due to the variances in people.

nknighthb 13y ago
I don't know the intricacies of Canadian code enforcement, but in the US building codes for private homes are only relevant at a few points: New construction, substantial renovation, certain not-wholly-private use cases, and certain types of financing when buying. New construction is where it's strictest. In a case like this, your contractor may have to install handles to pass inspection, but nothing stops you from changing them out for knobs if you want to.
- jerf 13y ago
  "In September, Vancouver council adopted new amendments to its building code, effective next March, that, among other things, will require lever handles on all doors and lever faucets in all new housing construction." ... "Will Johnston, the former Vancouver chief building inspector who wrote the changes in consultation with the building industry, doesn’t see this as the inevitable death of the doorknob because the rules aren’t retroactive. People can also still buy doorknobs and put them back on lever handle-equipped houses."
  - minikites 13y ago
    So why is this a 1984-esque rights trampling? New houses have to have lever handles. I'm sure they also have to be wired safely. Why should someone who is disabled only have a subset of houses to choose from?
    - mortenjorck 13y ago
      Honest question: Should all new private residences be required to have ramps or elevators to be wheelchair accessible? If not, where do you draw the line?
      - jtbigwoo 13y ago
        I think you could do a cost/benefit analysis on this sort of thing. How much cost does it add to a project and how much space does it take up vs. how many people benefit and what's the scale of the benefit? In the case of lever door handles or something like returns on stair railings, it's not very expensive and provides a benefit in accessibility or safety. On the other hand ramps are fairly expensive (thousands of dollars to hire a contractor to build one) and take up a lot of room (usually height:length of 1:12 or 1:16, not counting landings). Elevators are even more expensive (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars plus maintenance) and take up a fair amount of room.
      - DanBC 13y ago
        I'd happily force anyone building > X new dwellings to make sure that Y% of those are wheelchair accessible, or to have other accessible features.
sanskritabelt 13y ago
How do you feel about low-flow toilets.
- jerf 13y ago
  What's your question, exactly? Coercion and effect aren't intrinsically connected. Something that has a good effect might still not be worth the coercion; something coerced with the best of intentions might still not have a good effect.
  - sanskritabelt 13y ago
    Twenty years ago low flow toilets were more evidence of the heavy-handed iron fist of the Orwellian state into our every day lives.
mturmon 13y ago
You could spin this as safety as well as accessibility. E.g., if an older person is alone in the home and something happens. If the older person is a visitor, you might not change out the handles for them, but their safety is impacted if they can't open the doors. Other safety/accessibility regulations cover the width of doorways and the presence and specific design elements of handrails, even in private dwellings. (E.g., the handrail must be not too skinny and not too fat, and have parts on the end that turn inward and meet the wall.) There are a lot of such codes. Some of them I only know about because I built a home addition in California. Once you know about them, you start noticing these design elements on all the built structures around you. I'm not disagreeing with what you wrote! (I notice that you got a downvote, which seems weird.). Just pondering the distinction between safety and accessibility, and how you'd draw that line, and trying to think of related examples of regulations that pertain to private residences.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  I use to live in a home where the front door opened up into a staircase which went to the living area, the first floor was commercial space, not residential. What would this hypothetical elderly visitor do then? I think accessibility is fine and dandy in public spaces, but the line between accessibility and safety becomes quite clear when you begin considering private residences. There are all manner of perfectly normal objects, appliances, and situations that can become dangerous in hypothetical situations involving disabled visitors. Hell, just look at bathtubs: generally considered benign, but potential deathtraps for hypothetical elderly visitors. Nobody is likely to replace their bathtub with a no-slip walk-in bathtub just because an elderly person is visiting, should we mandate that all new structures be build with walk-in tubs? In the context of private residences, safety issues are ones that really present an equal-opportunity risk. Mandating circuit breakers is a clear-cut example of a safety issue, not an accessibility issue. Something that is done solely for the sake of the disabled is a clear-cut accessibility issue. Stair lifts, ramps, and accessible nobs are all accessibility issues. They do nothing for the safety of the general population; they should not be framed as safety issues.

jlgreco 13y ago

ADA was suppose to (figuratively speaking) build ramps, not tear down stairs. There is a theoretical threshold at which we should start considering if we have gone to far.

derekp7 13y ago
The argument in the article is that it is even better yet if construction can be made so that it benefits everyone without being a hindrance to anyone else. For example, many stores don't have ramps or stairs -- the store floor is at parking-lot / sidewalk level.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  If lever handles were actually preferred by everybody, then there would be no need for this legislation. Is it really a great injustice in society that somebody with poor hand dexterity might have to replace doorknobs in a newly purchased home? An injustice so great that we must mandate poor-dexterity accessible handles in all new construction? Here is an idea: if lever style handles are a medical necessity for somebody, let those devices be provided for them by the state, as other medical necessities are in Canada. What's next, installing stair lifts in every home on the off chance that an elderly person might move in? Banning stairs and requiring all new homes to have elevators instead? Are we going to start requiring that all homes that have raised floors in some rooms come with ramps pre-installed?
  - derekp7 13y ago
    From my understanding, the overall idea from the "inclusive" standardization process is if there is a choice between two things that are otherwise functionally and cost equivalent (or comparable), the inclusive item is what should be in the standard. Keep in mind that housing construction standards already have things like door height, door knob height, door width, stair tread rise/run ratios, etc. And the purpose of including new house construction in some of the standards, isn't for the benefit of the current home purchaser, but for the benefit of future owners of the dwelling, so that they have a greater selection of housing to choose from that doesn't require major retrofitting after purchase. And to further address the "banning stairs and requiring elevators" part of your comment, that falls under the Reductio ad absurdum informal logical fallacy -- that is, it isn't functionally / cost equivalent. However, I think you will notice that not to many new houses are built with only ladders connecting the various floors instead of stairs. Probably due to the current building standards.