The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #66974

Jake Pauls, CPE, Consulting Services in Building Use and Safety, 12507 Winexburg Manor Drive, Suite 201, Silver Spring, MD 20906, (301) 933-5275, bldguse@aol.com

Visit-ability (also VisitAbility and Visitability) “is an affordable, sustainable and inclusive design approach for integrating basic accessibility features into all newly built homes and housing.” Rather than full accessibility, it includes an accessible route or “zero step” entry into the home, 32-inch clear-width doorways and one accessible bathroom. The focus of a growing social movement—for community accessibility, it was directed initially to subsidized housing. Recently addressed in proposed national legislation for federally supported new homes in the U.S. under the name, “The Inclusive Home Design Act,” it has been required since 1999 for all new homes in the U.K. Based on the basic public health principle of equity, the most difficult part of the visit-ability package—the “zero-step entry—should also be justified as an important injury-prevention measure currently required by national model building codes for all new buildings except dwellings. Mainstreaming this feature for dwellings was addressed in APHA 200019 as part of that policy’s treatment of universal design or inclusive design. Since 1999, efforts have been made to incorporate an important part of the “zero-step” entry—the elimination of a permitted step at an entrance/exit door—into the International Residential Code and the NFPA Building Construction and Safety Code, two competing model codes. Initial failure to achieve even this modest change in design requirements is not unusual. Advocacy lessons learned from these code-change efforts are generally instructive, especially for the DisAbility Forum and a few APHA sections.

Learning Objectives:

After this presentation, participants will be able to:
• Appreciate differences between full accessibility and Visit-ability plus the methods used recently for achieving Visit-ability.
• Understand complementary approaches to, and benefits of, advocacy for Visit-ability and other public health goals such as injury prevention.
• Contribute to multiple advocacy efforts to achieve Visit-ability.

Keywords: Housing, Regulations

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Model codes, and code-development processes, of the International Code Council and the National Fire Protection Association
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.