Accessibility and the law

We also had to have a wheel chair
accessible bathroom down there. How absurd!....... and expensive!

What made it expensive, out of curiosity?

One trend these days when building new homes, for instance, is to make the
house fully accessible from day one. Zero-entrance doorways, walk-in
showers, wide doorways, lever door knobs. It's interesting to find that it
costs no more to build an accessible house than it does to build an
inaccessible house. Furthermore, the house is much more usable for
everyone...not just those with disabilities.

My guess is that in your case, you have to retrofit...which is always more
expensive. Your example is a good example of why legislation can cause more
problems in the end. A good argument for us all to make our sites as
accessible as we can to discourage the need for legislation ;o)

-Darrel

darrel wrote:

And in this US, the argument is that if you receive the benefits of being
able to run a business in our society, then, in turn, you must cater to our
society without prejudice.

As I said most business in the uk have no prejudices against anybody,
yet they still have the right of free choice.

I dont expect every man jack to cater for me, why should all these
minority groups?


You expect to be treated equally, no?

Quite frankly I dont really care on a personally level, I make my own
way in life without whinging too much.

By 'good living' do you mean 'charging more for the same services to people
with handicaps?' So, not only is a person who is handicapped banned from
using the same resources as you, but now they have to pay more as well?

Actually many disadvantaged people effectively have to pay less, because
they are subsidised by the government. Thats good because there is a
system in place already catering for them, which is the real argument.

Define free? It's a free world, but most of us live in societies. Part of
the social contract is to share the burden of society at large. If I ride my
bike to work, well, then why should I have to pay taxes to build roads? If I
don't have kids, why should my taxes go towards schools? I don't go to the
poor part of town, so why should I pay for the police to patrol it?

You are paying a lot for a lot of things you don't use. In turn, a lot of
people are paying for things that you use, but they don't. It's about
spreading the burden so all in a society can benefit. Some just call it
empathy.

Well I think you are actually agreeing with me.

Al Sparber- PVII wrote:

I think you are magnifying this out of proportion which is one reason
this subject, like CSS-P, cannot be discussed rationally on this type of
forum :-)

Not sure if Im magnifying it out of proportion. Im just telling it like
it is over here and quite frankly its the way I would a want it to stay.

darrel wrote:

We also had to have a wheel chair
accessible bathroom down there. How absurd!....... and expensive!

What made it expensive, out of curiosity?

One trend these days when building new homes, for instance, is to
make the house fully accessible from day one. Zero-entrance doorways,
walk-in showers, wide doorways, lever door knobs. It's interesting to
find that it costs no more to build an accessible house than it does
to build an inaccessible house. Furthermore, the house is much more
usable for everyone...not just those with disabilities.

We built a new house recently. We didn't think to make it accessible. We
do have a relative who uses a wheelchair and Aunt Elaine has no problems
with her wheelchair being carried up the front steps. We do have one of
the bathrooms on the main floor equipped with grab handles, a low-rise
potty and sink. That didn't cost much. But we would have spent a small
fortune installing an elevator for the second floor, the loft, and the
finished basement. I'm not sure where you live, but in the U.S. if
people need to make accessibility modifications and they are poor, there
are programs that help. However, since this has devolved into a legal,
moral type discussion, one must consider the implications of
over-legislation. Someone mentioned before the issue of paying school
taxes when you haven't a child in school. Interesting subject. Not for
this forum. But I will say that when we chose a location to build our
house we chose the best school system in the area because we didn't want
to have to send our kids to private school and pay for the upkeep of
public schools ;-). Anyway, if you all want to continue this discussion
there are some very nice "pub" newsgroups run by Dreamweaver community
members where this would be a hot topic ;-)

Actually many disadvantaged people effectively have to pay less, because
they are subsidised by the government. Thats good because there is a
system in place already catering for them, which is the real argument.

Ah! Well, that makes sense. Actually, it's along the same lines as what we
do. Instead of each business paying to make their business accessible, they
pay into the common pool to help those that are disabled overall.

Actually, I think that may make more sense since, as you say, your society
tends to be less discriminatory to begin with.

Well I think you are actually agreeing with me.

I think so. Damn. Now there's no more debate. ;o)

-Darrel

darrel wrote:

An alternative way to think about that is to not use the word 'unfortunate'.
If society provides more accessibility options to folks, than the
unfortunate prefix isn't really applicable.

I agree on that point most disadvantaged people dont want sympathy, they
often become very capable people after the initial problems.

I'm not sure where you live, but in the U.S. if
people need to make accessibility modifications and they are poor, there
are programs that help.

I wasn't talking about modifications, but rather planning in advance. WIth a
house, it's fairly easy to make it accessible if you're starting from
scratch. The benefits are big, for pretty much anyone. It's a lot easier to
move a couch through a 36" door than a 28" door. Walk-in-showers are much
safer for all (and roomier!) than tub-showers. A lever handle is much easier
to open with an armload of groceries than a round knob. Wheeling stuff in
and out of the house is lot easier with a zero-entrance way.

Retrofitting, of course, is always more expensive. Which is yet another good
argument to make your site accessible from day one, instead of having to
retrofit it down the road.

-Darrel

I'm not sure where you live, but in the U.S. if
people need to make accessibility modifications and they are poor,
there are programs that help.

I wasn't talking about modifications, but rather planning in advance.
WIth a house, it's fairly easy to make it accessible if you're
starting from scratch. The benefits are big, for pretty much anyone.
It's a lot easier to move a couch through a 36" door than a 28" door.

Walk-in-showers are much safer for all (and roomier!) than
tub-showers. A lever handle is much easier to open with an armload of
groceries than a round knob. Wheeling stuff in and out of the house
is lot easier with a zero-entrance way.

Retrofitting, of course, is always more expensive. Which is yet
another good argument to make your site accessible from day one,
instead of having to retrofit it down the road.

36" doors are minimum code for outside entrances in my town. We have
separate showers in 4 out of five of our full baths. I don't like lever
door handles and when food shopping always specify plastic grocery sacks
with handles :-). I know what you were talking about, Darrel :-). So,
should we have installed that elevator? No, don't answer :-)

Osgood wrote:

| These minority sections of society seem to be carrying around a big
| chip on their shoulders, I guess they have nothing more important in
| life to do but whinge all the time.

Boy - that's a sweeping statement!!

I reckon that the % of those whether in a minority or not predisposed to
whingeing would be the same - no?
--
Keep in touch with yourself !!

Cheers
Sinclair

So,
should we have installed that elevator? No, don't answer :-)

But I have to answer!

No, of course you shouldn't have installed the elevator. But perhaps you
could have planned for that being a future addition, so there'd be less
cost/work when the time comes for the house owner to install an elevator.

Besides, maybe an elevator won't ever be necessary. If the kitchen, a bath,
living room, and one room that could act as a bedroom are all on the same
floor, then you've at least made most of the house accessible already.

To tie it into web sites, you can't possibly plan for everything, but by
doing some things up front...like keeping your content semantic, separating
the content from the presentation, etc, chances are it will be a lot easier
to implement that new feature down the road and have to retrofit a lot less
of the site to accomodate it.

-Darrel