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BUILDING CONNECTION Spring 2019
A SUMMARY OF ABCB’S REPORT ON
MAINSTREAM ACCESSIBLE HOUSING
L
ast issue I talked about
the Livable Housing Design
Guidelines and mentioned the
ABCB put out an Options Paper on
accessible housing last year. The ABCB
has followed up with a report on all 179
submissions and the feedback from the
stakeholder consultation sessions.
The aim of the report is to reveal
some of the complexities that need to
be thought about in the next stage – the
Regulation Impact Statement (RIS).
The report doesn’t provide any
recommendations; it only reports on
the outcomes of the consultations and
submissions. It is a very lengthy report,
over 121 pages, so I will pick out some
highlights for a quicker read.
The executive summary listed the key
issues as:
∫ The need to consider concepts
of equity, independence and the
principles of universal design
∫ Government commitments
∫ The number of households with at
least one person with disability
∫ The need to account for population
ageing
∫ Provisions for difficult sites and other
one-off circumstances
∫ Consideration of rental properties
where modifications are required
∫ Consideration for structural features
that are costly to modify later
∫ Benefits that go beyond the physical
aspects of the home such as
increased participation and inclusion
∫ How to quantify any additional
costs that could fall to industry or
consumers
∫ Should it be called ‘accessible
housing’ or something else
So let’s take a look at some of these
issues and what it might mean.
The Options Paper used the term
‘Accessible Housing’ and asked if
this was an appropriate term. Many
submissions thought this sounded
too much like housing specifically for
people with disability. No other terms
seemed to work though. However, if you
think about it, if universally accessible
features are included in the NCC then
Dr Jane Bringolf
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UNIVERSAL DESIGN -
DR JANE BRINGOLF