The compliance date for the revised 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design recently passed on March 15, 2012. The new standard applies to new construction and remodels begun after that date. This is the first overall update since the 1991 standards.

The ADA standards have a far reaching impact on many building products, including doors, paving, cabinets, countertops, lighting, hand rails, plumbing fixtures, toilet room accessories -- almost anything that someone in a building can actually touch or see.

The standards may also impact your own place of business and how you provide customer service.

Some requirements have been beefed up, others have been backed off. An article in the current issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine details some of the changes that affect exterior design, for example. Accessible parking spaces in very large parking lots will now need a higher percentage (1 in 6) to be van-accessible. By contrast, Section 705, the requirement for tactile warning devices (truncated domes - that small field of yellow bumps that have been appearing on curb-cuts and at the edges of parking lots, which warn visually-impaired pedestrians that they are about to walk into traffic) now omits any mention of curb cuts or parking lots. It only states a requirement for platform edges.

Note that ADA is only one of several sets of Federal standards on accessibility, and states and municipalities may have other requirements.

For more information, visit www.ada.gov or contact Chusid Associates.