March 8, 2024, the effective date for the British Columbia Building Code (BCBC) 2024, is quickly moving closer! As a result, we find ourselves digging deeper into this new edition to support our clients and their projects. At the forefront of the changes within Part 3 of the BCBC 2024 is Section 3.8 - Accessibility. This no surprise as we notice accessibility and inclusion driving the path forward in many sectors.
Requirements within Section 3.8 aim to support the disability community, including people with mobility disabilities, vision or hearing disabilities, and people with care providers.
Some significant changes to the BCBC include:
Increased clear area to exterior entrances and pathways,
Modification to required clear space for interior paths of travel which will provide designers with flexibility,
Inclusion of colour contrast to highlight building features, and
Requirements to support wayfinding.
Acknowledging the Building Code provides minimum requirements, good design often goes beyond these minimums to support meaningful access.
An example of going beyond these minimums was demonstrated by the City of Vancouver with their commitment to achieve Rick Hansen Foundation Accessible CertificationTM (RHFAC) Gold for all newly built municipal facilities.
The Rick Hansen Foundation (RHF) is part of the movement to help create a fully accessible and inclusive Canada with the goal to provide meaningful access for everyone. They have developed the RHFAC Rating Survey, a national rating system that provides clients with a snapshot of the overall level of meaningful access of their site.
At Celerity Engineering, Corie Lubben is a RHFAC Professional and can rate pre-construction and existing sites to help clients become leaders in equity, diversity and inclusion, by building accessible spaces that benefit everyone.
RHFAC recently released a new version of their rating survey, RHFAC Rating Survey v4.0, which came into effect January 15, 2024. This new version builds on the previous version and has been expanded to include a wider disability community. An important addition is a new category for Mind-Friendly Environments, which includes new criteria to evaluate how sites accommodate people with various neurological experiences. A second new category, Technology and Innovation, has been added to encourage and recognize innovation and the use of technology to positively impact meaningful access at a site. Updated standards such as CSA B651:23 Accessible design for the built environment and CSA/ASC B652:23 Accessible dwellings are also incorporated within this latest version.
The Rick Hansen Foundation are leaders in accessibility and support inclusion and universal design, and RFHAC v4.0 contains valuable and exciting information which will help accelerate accessible design. Even if your project goal isn’t ultimately to achieve a RHFAC rating, Celerity Engineering can provide comments alongside a typical building code review to help identify barriers and improve accessibility to your site. We look forward to helping our clients integrate these points and practices into their design.