Thanks to the Office of Access and Functional Needs Library in California, we can all download a free version of Lee Wilson‘s very useful publication, Evacuation of People with Disability and Emergent Limitations. Lee is an access consultant who is very active in Australia on this topic. Clearly, the focus on providing access into buildings now has to be matched with being able to get out in the event of a fire or other emergency. The guide takes you through many scenarios – it has lots of technical information within its 189 pages.
Editor’s note: I recently returned from travelling the Silk Road from Western China to Shanghai where emergency exit signs in all hotels were placed 30 cm above the floor level and many were photo-illuminated, so they don’t rely on electricity to stay illuminated in a fire. The running man symbol was used in each case, as pictured left, but I did not see any with the international access symbol as shown above. Also each room
had “fire escape masks” for wearing during evacuation as shown in the picture below. As an aside, I posted the above picture on Linked In – at the time of posting, it received more than 3,600 views, so it is obviously a topic of interest.