#20: Have visual alarms — Library Accessibility

From Emma:

My current library has visual alarms—I suspect it’s required by building codes in many places. The Dallas Public Library Facilities team constantly impresses me with how hard they work and how much they are open to trying to improve accessibility even though they are constrained by very limited resources, so I also think that if we hadn’t had visual alams, I could have asked and they would have found a way to make it happen. As it was, though, I was able to test this when the professional fire inspectors came to do their annual inspection of our system. I walked around with my fingers in my ears looking at the ones on the public floor, but I suspect there was more formal testing by the inspectors and the results never got back to me, which happens often when we pass an inspection.

Since this tip’s description was so simple, I thought I’d also mention how I came up with it: I looked into ADA compliance resources for private businesses. Websites like that were one of the first places I started looking for accessibility ideas, but I actually didn’t find them all that helpful in most areas because they tend to be focused on ‘what is the minimum we can do to be compliant with the law?’ rather than ‘what is the maximum we can do to make our facilities and services usable?’ but safety concerns seem to be an exception—the problems seem to be a bit more all-or-nothing, and since it is a safety issue the regulations seem to come down on “all” rather than “nothing.” For example, I believe these alarms are required (at least, if you touch your alarms system to make any other changes, you have to add visual alarms if you don’t already have them), but your aisles don’t have to be wide enough for wheelchair access—apparently having a staff member retrieve requested titles is a ‘reasonable substitute’ for patrons in wheelchairs who want to browse the collection (no it isn’t, but I am not a lawyer or a legislator…).

Safety stuff like this also seems like a great area to be able to call on a professional, if you have one available. One of the things on my mental to do list is to see if we can get someone from Code Compliance, or someone else with expertise, to come out and review our branch. I like to think I’m doing a good job, but I’m sure they would spot things I missed.