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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,
by 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 agoI 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.