Most building owners who are offering a service to the public will fall within the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act that finally comes into force in October 2004.
We have worked with a wide range of specialist access consultants to provide sensible, affordable, solutions to the access problems for a wide range of building types. These are as diverse as Cathedrals, National Trust Houses, Historic Royal Palaces and Museums and Galleries. The common thread in all these cases being that they are significant historic buildings and the access needs have to be balanced against the irreversible damage to the historic fabric of the building. We are firmly committed to equal access for all and believe that in the majority of cases practical solutions can be found to provide good physical access. There are, however, a number of very special cases where the insertion of lifts, ramps and access platforms is too great an alteration to fragile historic fabric and where access has been provided by way of ‘virtual’ tours of the building using video cameras. These buildings remain the exception and tend to be National Trust Houses (like Knole or Oxburgh) or similar where the historic building itself is the purpose of the visit. Most historic buildings are sufficiently robust to tolerate the insertion of lifts – hence the new lifts being installed at St George’s Hall, Christ Church Spitalfields and in all the major museum buildings where we are acting as architects.
It is important to remember that disability access does not just mean physical access to buildings. We have been involved in a wide range of adaptations to enable buildings to be more accessible to the deaf and the visually impaired visitor.
We work regularly with three specialist consultancies on Access Audits. Each of these consultancies has been set up by former members of staff and we have closely integrated working arrangements. We do firmly believe that an access audit is of no use unless it delivers practical solutions to overcome the problems that are identified.
