Pinterest DietPinterest AddictBuahahaHahaahaHeheheheheheDiet It'SBest DietsFunny ConfessionsFood PornForwardHave you heard about this new diet? It's called the 'Pinterest Diet' ... all you do is look at food, but never eat any of it!Federal rules regulate door access for the disabled. /Getty Images At its core, the Americans with Disabilities Act is about access. The act, signed into federal law in 1990, requires stores, banks and other businesses with public buildings to guarantee service to people with disabilities. Part of the act details how building owners can upgrade entryways to provide access for the disabled. However, not all buildings need retrofits to comply with the law. A building's construction date determines whether an upgrade is needed. Door Specifications ADA-compliant doors must be wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs. The law calls for entryways to be at least 32 inches wide, as measured between the door's face and the opposite doorstop when the door is open 90 degrees.

Clearance around doors must be 36 inches. The law exempts doors that don't require full passage to access a room, such as an entryway into a closet less than 2 feet deep. bedroom door knob stuckThe minimum width on such doors is 20 inches. upvc french doors side windowsFor double doors, the minimum width is 48 inches, and the doors must swing in the same direction. sliding screen door wont lockThe floor or ground around the door must be level and clear of obstructions. cost of cavity sliding doorIn addition, doorway thresholds can't be higher than 3/4 inch for exterior sliding doors, and no higher than half an inch for all other door types. bi fold shower door spare parts

If a door is at the end of a hallway, wheelchair access requires a clearance around the door of 54 inches. Handles and Closers Federal law also governs handles, pulls, latches and locks, as well as a door's opening force and closing speed. bi fold shower door spare partsHardware must have a shape designed for easy grasping with one hand, and can't require tight pinching or wrist-twisting to operate. hollow core wood door priceHardware required for opening can't be mounted more than 48 inches above the floor. A door with a closer must take at least three seconds to shut to within 3 inches of the latch. The maximum allowed force necessary to open a door is 5 pounds. The exception is a fire door, which must have the minimum force allowed under local zoning codes. Automatic-door units must be low-energy models, must take at least three seconds to open and can't require more than 15 pounds of force to stop door movement.

Access The ADA also regulates access to a building's doors. A building that has just one entrance up a flight of stairs, with no wheelchair ramp, violates the law. Exterior entryways must also connect via a wheelchair-accessible route to public transportation stops, to accessible parking and passenger-loading areas, and to public streets and sidewalks. The law also mandates that exterior doors link to all wheelchair-accessible areas inside the building. A service entrance can't be the only accessible entrance into a building, unless it's the building's only entryway — for example, into a garage. Making Improvements Not every building needs upgrades to comply with the ADA. The law's accessibility rules went into effect Jan. 26, 1992, and property owners don't have to retrofit doors on buildings built before that date. For example, operators of a museum built before the effective date could move inaccessible exhibits to a reachable area or offer a video of the exhibits, rather than install new doors.

The ADA requires only that owners of public accommodations such as shopping centers, hotels and restaurants remove access barriers in existing buildings when doing so doesn't require significant difficulty or expense. Businesses can also wait to make modifications until they have the financial means to afford the upgrades and the federal government offers tax credits for retrofits. However, all buildings constructed or modified after the effective date must comply with the law. References U.S. Department of Justice: Information and Technical Assistance ...U.S. Access Board: ADA Accessibility GuidelinesUniversity of Kansas: Interior Space Planning: Pre-Planning & Codes CompliancesU.S. Department of Justice: Myths and Facts About the Americans With Disabilities ActU.S. /Getty Images Suggest an Article CorrectionPeople living in, working in, and visiting European and Asian capitals take it for granted that, when they need to go, they will find a clean, safe, available public restroom nearby.

This, unfortunately, is not the case in Washington, DC, our nation’s Capital. If you are in downtown DC and urgently have to go, you will have a hard time finding a public restroom nearby. Even if there is one, the hours are limited and there are no signs to tell you where it is located. Some private restaurants and food chains, might let you in. However, increasingly they are limiting access to patrons. And, if you are walking in Washington DC late at night and urgently have to go, you may be in big trouble. Chances are you will have to walk a half-mile to a mile to find a clean, safe, restroom that is open; that is, if you know where the few restrooms in DC open 24/7 are located.The People for Fairness Coalition (PFC) — established in April 2008 with the objective of finding housing for everyone in Washington DC through advocacy, outreach and peer mentoring — has taken up the challenge of ensuring that clean, safe public restrooms are available to everyone 24/7 in downtown areas of Washington DC.

On January 10, 2017, inspired by the work of the PFFC Public Restroom Initiative, DC Council Member Brianne Nadeau introduced legislation to establish a Public Restroom Facility Task Force. The bill, assigned to the City Council Committee on Health, is charged with “recommending sites and methods for installing public restrooms and to determine the best method of incentivizing businesses to keep their restrooms open to the general public”. Once approved the Task Force will explore viable options for public restrooms as well as possible locations for public restrooms. The legislation has five additional co-introducers: DC Council Members Bond, Silverman, Gross, White, and Allen. We will be working closely to ensure that our activities over the coming months are carried out in sync with the objectives of the Public Restroom Task Force. In January we also received the formal endorsement of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.Also in January: we received the formal endorsement of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.

In addition we issued a 2016 Follow up to the Restroom Inventory that we carried out in 2015. The key findings: Of 42 private facilities visited in 2015 that let us enter the restrooms, 10 had subsequently put locks and combinations on their doors. Among the private facilities that we visited there were signs of discrimination against an individual with the appearance of being homeless when he asked to use the restroom facilities.In February we will be delivering presentations, with the hopes of securing additional endorsements, to: the Fair Budget Coalition, the Dupont Circle Citizens Association, and the Downtown DC BID. We will also be testifying at the DC City Council 2017 Oversight Hearings to three Committees: Human Services, Health, and Housing & Neighborhood RevitalizationIt all began in July of 2014 when, at one or our weekly PFC meetings, a member raised the issue. Although it was not central to our objective of finding housing for everyone who needs it in DC, we decide it was important for us to take it on: everyone, including those without housing, need to have safe, clean, restrooms available any time of day or night.

We started by learning from the experiences of other cities in the US and Canada that have had recently been successful in installing and maintaining public restrooms that are clean, safe, and available 24/7. With models and lessons in hand, in November 2014 we established our Downtown Washington DC Public Restroom Initiative. We formed a committee composed of five passionate members of PFC who are determined to stay the course until clean, safe restrooms available 24/7 are installed in needed areas of downtown DC. We have been meeting weekly since November 2014 and carrying out activities in between.Inventory of facilities with restrooms in five areas of downtown DCOur first task was to determine whether downtown DC has a problem. Between January and March of 2015 we selected five areas of downtown DC that have a large population of individuals without housing and high levels of pedestrian traffic. We visited 85 restrooms in private establishments in these areas in order to find out whether we could use their restrooms without purchasing something.

If they let us in, we: wrote down the hours the establishment was open, and we entered the restroom in order to see if the restroom was clean and safe. We also did an internet search in order to identify restrooms in DC that are open 24/7.Our analysis concluded that downtown Washington DC does have a problem. Half of the establishments that we visited limited access to patrons and those that were open to the public are increasingly putting locks and combinations on their bathroom doors. There are only 3 clean, safe restrooms open 24/7 in all of Washington DC. If you have to go urgently and don’t know the area well you wouldn’t know where to go as there is no signage leading you to these restrooms. For more information see the 3-page summary of the report or the 14 page full report.Our accomplishment and next stepsSince completing the restroom inventory we have: presented testimony to the DC City Council on the problem; shared the inventory reports with several Council Members, launched a petition asking the DC City Council to support and finance restrooms in needed downtown areas that are clean, safe, and available 24/7;

received the endorsement of the Foggy Bottom ANC and the Dupont Circle ANC; had articles on our initiative published in the Washington Post, Street Sense, and the DC Currents. We have nearly 1,000 signatures to our petition.Our overall strategy is to raise consciousness, educate on the problem, and build support through advocacy. To this end, our approach over the coming months is three pronged: (1) obtain support and buy in from two areas where we believe there is an immediate need for a public restroom — the Dupont Circle area and along the K Street corridor between Farragut and Franklin Squares (this includes obtaining support from local ANCs, resident associations, churches, businessmen and business organizations) ; (2) obtain support from  DC Council members; and (3) obtain the support of important associations representing businesses, consumers, and associations that represent the homeless,  senior, and individuals with disabilities.We are delighted that on January 10, 2017 DC Council Member Brianne Nadeau, inspired by a presentation we gave her in November, presented legislation to establish a Public Restroom Task Force to “recommend sites and methods for installing public restrooms and to determine the best method of incentivizing businesses to keep their restrooms open to the general public”.