How to Build an Accessible Curb Cut

Because this site gets a num­ber of hits on acces­si­bil­ity spec­i­fi­ca­tions of actual curb cuts, I thought I would post a cou­ple of resources for mis­guided vis­i­tors. Specif­i­cally I’ll out­line the lit­tle that I’ve been able to find out about curb cuts and the Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act (ADA).

Def­i­n­i­tion

First off a def­i­n­i­tion from the Wikipedia entry on curb cuts:

A curb cut (US) or dropped kerb (UK) is a ramp lead­ing smoothly down from a side­walk to a street, rather than abruptly end­ing with a curb and drop­ping roughly 10–15 cm (4~6 inches).

Where

Page 4 of the offi­cial Check­list for Exist­ing Facil­i­ties (PDF) from the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act Home Page asks the ques­tion, “Do curbs on the route have curb cuts at dri­ves, park­ing and drop offs?” From this I’m going to posit that these are the three places where curb cuts are required.

Slope

The next para­graph in a dis­cus­sion on ramps dis­cusses the slope ration and states that “the slopes of ramps (be) no greater than 1:12,” it then goes on:

Slope is given as a ratio of the height to the length. 1:12 means for every 12 inches along the base of the ramp, the height increases one inch. For a 1:12 max­i­mum slope, at at least one foot of ramp length is needed for each inch of height.

More Infor­ma­tion

For those who are look­ing for more infor­ma­tion, the US Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion Fed­eral High­way Admin­is­tra­tion has a doc­u­ment enti­tled Design­ing Side­walks and Trails for Access, includ­ing an entire chap­ter on “curb ramps” includ­ing infor­ma­tion on how curb ramps impact dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions, dif­fer­ent types, best prac­tices and great diagrams.

If you’re look­ing for a basic check­list on facil­ity acces­si­bil­ity, check out this Facil­i­ties Check­list from the National Cen­ter on Work­force and Dis­abil­ity.

Accessible Content Management Systems

I like the idea of using a con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem for on some projects. How­ever, if acces­si­bil­ity is a pri­or­ity then options are quickly go from many to far fewer. For­tu­nately, many of the larger open source con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems have taken on a goal of achiev­ing some level of acces­si­bil­ity, if only as a byprod­uct of being stan­dards compliant.

The ques­tion of whether a con­tent man­age­ment is acces­si­ble is a com­pli­cated one, regard­less of what mea­sure of acces­si­bil­ity some­one chooses to use. Every con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem has dif­fer­ent areas which may or not be acces­si­ble. Here are some of those factors:

• CMS gen­er­ated con­tent When a user sub­mits con­tent to be included for dis­play in a CMS, inac­ces­si­ble tags/structure is some­times used to present that con­tent to the end user.
• Tem­plate Sys­tem The tem­plate sys­tem con­trols how the con­tent is pre­sented. How much does the sys­tem allow the site admin­is­tra­tor to define his/her own struc­ture and tags? While all sys­tems facil­i­tate tem­plate cus­tomiza­tion to some degree, many will still require inac­ces­si­ble tags or struc­ture to be used.
• Admin­is­tra­tive Fea­tures While the above points pri­mar­ily ref­er­ence what a site vis­i­tor would see, the tool used to input con­tent also needs to be acces­si­ble, whether is is the back­end of a web­site or a stand­alone application.
• Third-party Plu­g­ins The con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems that I have worked with have all allowed peo­ple to develop mod­ules or plu­g­ins to pro­vide addi­tional func­tion­al­ity to the sys­tem. What kind of guide­lines are devel­op­ers required to adhere to when sub­mit­ting new modules?
• Any­thing Else?

That’s a short list that’s too gen­eral to really be use­ful for any­thing, but may be a help­ful frame­work when look­ing at dif­fer­ent con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems. With all of the stan­dards based design evan­ge­lism out there right now most of the major sys­tems are at least dis­cussing devel­op­ment in a direc­tion that will lead to greater acces­si­bil­ity with some projects already claim­ing some form of stan­dards com­pli­ance. That said, I know at least a cou­ple of peo­ple who weren’t found exist­ing sys­tems lack­ing in the area of acces­si­bil­ity and opted to develop their own home­grown sys­tem to meet their needs.

I’m hop­ing to explore this issue in greater detail– do any of you have any expe­ri­ence with an acces­si­ble CMS? Here is a (very incom­plete) list of links I’ve recently found on the topic…

• Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tems Can Improve Acces­si­bil­ity (warn­ing: one of his first rec­om­men­da­tions is to “gen­er­ate mul­ti­ple sites”)
• Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tems: Cre­at­ing acces­si­ble con­tent from a Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tem (CMS) (good overview that men­tions some spe­cific things to look for)
• Mambo (now Joomla!) misc: Sec­tion 508 Com­pli­ance, Access­si­ble Mambo fork, Project Orange Mambo acces­si­bil­ity initiative
• Plone, “Plone is known as the con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem that was engi­neered for acces­si­bil­ity from the very begin­ning, and it has con­tin­ued to be the world leader in acces­si­bil­ity compliance.”
• “Client out­put from php­Web­Site is valid XHTML 1.0 and meets the W3C’s Web Acces­si­bil­ity Ini­tia­tive require­ments.“
• Acces­si­ble Xoops
• Any other links?

Sorry– com­ments were turned off ear­lier, they are on now– thanks.