SAFETY FLOORING
ACCESSIBLE TO ALL
If you’re specifying safety flooring where it will be used by the general public, you’ll need to consider inclusive designs that are accessible to all to make sure you don’t fall foul of the law. Emma Goulding, Marketing Specialist at Altro, discusses understanding what’s required to meet the latest legislation and how to avoid tripping up when it comes to disabled access.
Legislation to make the built environment accessible to all has been in place for eight years, and in that time there have been many developments in our understanding of inclusive design as well as in the materials that have been available to use.
The Equality Act (2010), for example, sets out the current requirements for disabled access. The aim is to enable optimum orientation and movement through buildings for visually impaired or disabled people during their normal daily activities. What this means in practice for specifying flooring, is that you need to consider the slip resistance, texture, colour, pattern, contrast resilience and acoustics of any materials you use.
Contrast is key An important aspect to consider in inclusive design is how to differentiate between different areas. For someone who is visually impaired, subtle differences between floors,
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walls, steps and doorways can be problematic. It’s not enough to consider colour alone when considering contrast, as the amount of light reflected from surfaces is actually the main factor in determining a person’s ability to identify different surfaces.
Light Reflectance Values (LRVs) are the best way to measure contrast, as set out in BS8493:2008. Every material has an LRV marked out of 100 points. To meet requirements, there should be at least a 30 point variance in LRVs between adjacent surfaces such as floors and walls. It is good practice for manufacturers to make this information readily available about their products; the entire ranges of Altro flooring and wall products have been rated and the figures are available online.
Keep it simple Conversely, where different types of flooring are used alongside each other and there is no step between them, it’s equally important
to ensure that the LRVs of the materials are as similar as possible to avoid creating the illusion of a step where there isn’t one. That means threshold strips should also blend with the flooring. Choosing flooring that’s versatile enough to be used throughout a wide area is a good way to avoid these difficulties. This is an area where developments in flooring technology give you wider choices than when legislation first came in some years back. Altro Aquarius safety flooring, for example, is the first floor developed for use in wet and dry areas, for shoes and bare feet, so in environments such as leisure centre changing rooms, you can now use just one type of flooring rather than a specific safety floor for wet areas and another for dry, which would need to be carefully matched to meet accessibility guidelines.
Sparkle and gloss Approved Document M of the Building Regulations
recommends that highly reflective surfaces should be avoided. These can appear wet to people with visual impairment or cause confusion for some older people. This was a major driver for us at Altro when we developed the first new generation safety floors without the traditional ‘sparkle’ some years ago.
Safety first It’s best practice in our modern litigation culture to use safety flooring in any areas used by the general public. Add to that the additional risks of those who are unsteady on their feet, or have visual impairments and the need for high quality safety flooring becomes paramount. Choose safety flooring with a Slip Resistance Value (SRV) of 36 or above and a surface roughness of greater than 20 microns to meet the recommendations of the HSE.
Ensure you choose safety flooring that maintains its slip resistance for its entire
www.tomorrowsflooring.com
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