In-Depth Post #3

Good morning, Good afternoon, and Good evening. 

Where ever you are, welcome to my third In-Depth Post! My In-Depth Project is about how we can design buildings so that they are fully accessible to anyone with a disability. 

 

Project Progress Report  

Today I will be sharing with you the results of my comparison of specific parts of the Building Code to areas at Gleneagle Secondary to see how our school complied. 

*All of my pictures have a meter stick that is 100cm long so that you can get an idea of the size of objects.

       
The water fountain pictured here is a good example of an accessible water fountain. It has space on the sides, the water bottle filler is triggered by a sensor, and to turn on the water fountain there is a button located on the front of the water fountain. 

Our library surprised me when I laid out the meter stick to measure how wide the area between the bookshelves was and I discovered that it ended up being less than a meter at one end of the row of shelves. That means that it is not in line with the building code. But the other end was in line with the building code. I noticed that there was another pathway through the library area that looked a bit small; when I measured it, it was under one meter. 

Seeing that some parts of our school library were not in line with the building code really surprised me because when I had looked at other parts of our school, they were all accessible. 

As part of this In-Depth Post, I measured doorways and other areas at school. I noticed that the door to the washroom that was marked as accessible was smaller than the classroom doors. This surprised me as I would think that the bathroom that was built with people with a disability in mind would have a bigger door than the regular classroom door. 

I was even more surprised when I looked at the building code and saw that the minimum clear width of a doorway only has to be 81cm. I thought that it would be bigger to accommodate people with powered wheelchairs. 

One thing that I was impressed with was the passing areas in the hallways. The building code requires the building to have a 180cm by 180cm passing area at 30-meter intervals. Our school has that, and they are closer than 30 meters to each other. 

When I first started this project, one thing that I was drawn to was the accessible parking spaces. They lined up perfectly with the front door, and there are no ramps to access the door. When you come up to the door, there is a door open button right there for you to use.  

The parking spaces were even bigger than the minimum size laid out in the building code, which made me happy because some people have powered wheelchairs that need more space to get out of cars. 

* In both of theses pictures there are two meter sticks lined up so it looks like one meter stick but it is actually two meter sticks.

When I was talking with Annerieke, the professional architect mentoring me, a big topic that we talked about was how making a person with a disability have to use another door to get into school would make them feel left out. But if the front door was accessible to everyone, then they wouldn’t feel left out. 

 

Report on Mentorship Experience  

  1. Some logistical challenges that affected our conversation were trying to find a time that worked for both Annerieke and I. I have T.A.L.O.N.S after school on some days, but not others, and Annerieke works and then has a long commute home. 
  1. Some factors that affected our ability to interact effectively was the Wi-Fi. It would lag and then one of us would miss part of the conversation and then we would have to go over the topic again. 
  1. Some things that went particularly well during our mentoring sessions were keeping our meetings on time. This is especially important because my mentor has a job that they are doing while mentoring me. Another thing that went well was keeping our conversation moving forward, this is important because if we get stuck on a topic, then we will run out of time without getting to all of the topics that were on the agenda. 
  1. Some learning challenges that emerged for me when we started going through the building code was trying to completely understand the building code. The people who reference it all are architects and they all know exactly what they are looking for, whereas I am trying to understand what all of the symbols and references mean. 

 

Thanks for reading to the end of this In-Depth Post, it’s been a long one and I appreciate your attention. 

 

Until next time, 

Matthias 

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