Closer Look at Restroom Design<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>Page 1

Closer Look at Restroom Design
Building Operating Management October 2003

By Joan Stein

Like any law, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has both a letter and a spirit. Complying with the letter of the law, as spelled out in the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG), means adhering to the many specific details that guide the design and construction of buildings. Complying with the spirit of the law doesn’t mean ignoring those details. Rather, it means understanding the real purpose of the law as it applies to facilities: to make it possible for all people to use buildings. In other words, the idea is to make buildings useful to as many potential users as possible.

Looked at this way, accessibility becomes transformed into a broader principle - universal design. And with that transformation, the costs of accessibility bring benefits that go beyond the important goal of legal compliance. By making a facility more useful to more people, universal design makes it easier for people to shop in stores, eat in restaurants or make their way through the workplace.

Restroom design provides a good example of the way that universal design principles are becoming more important. When the ADA was signed into law 13 years ago, it was widely understood that restrooms, along with stairs, either into or out of buildings or from one floor to another, were going to face the most changes. Accessible and usable toilet stalls and sinks required more space than what was available in existing layouts. It’s no surprise that facility executives focused on the details of design and construction.

Clearing up Confusion
Sometimes, facility executives were lucky enough to be able to remove partitions and convert two existing stalls into one accessible stall and still meet fixture count requirements from plumbing inspectors. Sometimes, facility executives were lucky enough to have adjacent areas where plumbing could be connected to provide an accessible “family toilet room” - a single-user, unisex toilet room.

But sometimes facility executives had none of the aforementioned luck. Early in the existence of ADAAG, there was confusion as to what was required in a restroom. Many were told, and believed, that the only “ADA-compliant” lavatory was the “handicapped elongated sink.” This was not true. The elements that make a lavatory accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities are the height, the knee and toe clearance, the insulation of the pipes, the depth of the bowl and the placement and type of faucet hardware. All of those can be a part of any “standard” sink, at a standard price.

In addition to adding cost, “ADA-compliant” elongated sinks consume valuable floor space, and someone with limited ability to reach - someone with arthritis or a wheelchair user - might not be able to use the faucet hardware from the front of the sink.

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