Issue: Vertical accessibility to all levels in a classroom.
Analysis: The applicant is requesting a waiver from access to six levels of a college lecture hall. The area in question is part of a new, $4,800,000 building on an existing campus to provide additional instructional space for students. Each classroom will have 50 seats with 3 wheelchair seating locations in the front of each room. A portion of the wheelchair seating is located on the end of the row and no designated companion seating is shown.
Project Progress:
The project is in plan review.
Items to be Waived:
Vertical accessibility to six levels of seating, as required by Section 553.509, Florida Statutes.
553.509 Vertical accessibility. Nothing in Sections 553.501-553.513 or the guidelines shall be construed to relieve the owner of any building, structure or facility governed by those sections from the duty to provide vertical accessibility to all levels above and below the occupiable grade level regardless of whether the guidelines require an elevator to be installed in such building, structure or facility, except for:
(1) Elevator pits, elevator penthouses, mechanical rooms, piping or equipment catwalks and automobile lubrication and maintenance pits and platforms;
(2) Unoccupiable spaces, such as rooms, enclosed spaces and storage spaces that are not designed for human occupancy, for public accommodations or for work areas; and
(3) Occupiable spaces and rooms that are not open to the public and that house no more than five persons, including, but not limited to equipment control rooms and projection booths.
Waiver Criteria: There is no specific guidance for a waiver of this requirement in the code. The Commission’s current rule, authorized in Section 553.512, Florida Statutes, provides criteria for granting waivers and allows consideration of unnecessary or extreme hardship to the applicant if the specific requirements were imposed.