Designing for people who came back injured

Accessibility requirements existed in the building code before and were widely ignored, on the assumption that the people affected were few and would not complain. Both halves of that assumption have stopped being true.

What the requirement actually covers

Level or ramped access at entrances, with a gradient a person can actually manage rather than a token slope.

Door widths, corridor widths and turning circles inside buildings.

Lifts in multi-storey public buildings, and in residential buildings above a defined height.

Accessible sanitary facilities.

And, in public space: dropped kerbs, tactile paving, crossing times set for someone who walks slowly, and transport with level boarding.

Why it is cheap at design stage and expensive later

A ramp designed into a building costs almost nothing. A ramp added to a finished building costs a great deal and usually looks like what it is.

The same applies to door widths, lift shafts and bathroom dimensions: all are free on a drawing and structural once built.

What has changed in practice

Enforcement, because there are now people who will point out a non-compliant building and be listened to, and because reconstruction funding conditions increasingly require compliance as a condition of payment.

Design culture, more slowly. Architects trained without thinking about it are learning to.

The framing worth using

This is not accommodation of a minority. Everybody uses accessible design eventually: with a pushchair, with luggage, with a broken leg, or simply when old. A building designed for the least mobile user works better for everybody, which is the argument that persuades a budget holder.

Putting accessibility in at design stage costs one per cent and adding it later fifteen — I have seen that ratio in price lists for years. But the ratio is not the point: everyone uses accessible design eventually, with a pushchair and then with age. The building put up now will serve the population of the next fifty years.