My Accessible Room is not Accessible, Applying Human Factors: Principals to Enhance the Accessibility of Hotel Rooms

摘要

The present study is geared toward establishing, documenting, and evaluating the accessibility of hotel rooms for people with disabilities. Even though there are many accessible designs and standards exists nowadays such as the American with Disability Act standards (ADA), UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Universal Design techniques (UD), many disabled hotel guestsworld-wide still faces challenges when they need to stay at hotels due to the inaccessibility of their accommodations. A survey was conducted to assess why some accessible hotel rooms are not disabled-friendly and it was discovered that many of the accessible room configurations lack the consideration of ergonomics and anthropometry of guests and hence, inaccessible environments. The research started by collecting a number of complaints from hotel guest regarding their experience with accessible rooms through the internet. The complaints were analysed and we have found that it varies by the kind of disability and the hurdles encountered. Then, we categorizedbest practices in terms of accessible hotel accommodations from many standards and laws and then attempt to identify apparent shortcoming of the accessible room accommodations in the built environment. The study found out that many of the shortcomings could be avoided if the designer of the accessible room consider human factors principals such as maximum reach of the hand, arm strength, etc.