Accessibility. It’s
on everyone’s minds these days and it is at the forefront of Classic Displays
product development. Over the last year
we have spent a lot of time focusing on accessibility. With the Accessibility
for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) gaining traction and a number of
compliancy deadlines lined up for the coming years we wanted to ensure we
understood the act, how it would affect our customers and what we could do to
help them become compliant.
A few years ago we began looking at the ergonomics of
standard park benches and how they could be improved upon and in 2009 we
introduced our first ergonomically correct bench, the Ergo. Since then we have continued to add to what is
now our line of accessible benches, this past year focusing on our standard
line of benches and how we could modify them to make them accessible.
One of the standards set in the AODA is for the design of
public spaces, which as it currently stands, requires outdoor public eating
areas to have a minimum of 20% of the tables be wheelchair accessible. While we agree that wheelchair accessible
tables should be mandatory we don’t think it should stop there. We also
encourage our customer’s to consider adding accessible benches to their public
spaces as well.
Fortunately, we are not the only ones that understand the
importance of accessibility in public spaces and see the benefits. We have been
working with the City of London for a number of years and manufacture the
specified bench for their parks. In 2014 the city ordered 25 Accessible Riverside
benches and will continue to order them on an as needed basis.
Another City that has begun to embrace our accessible line
of benches is the City of Toronto. Our standard Riverside bench has been the
specified bench for the City for a couple of years now and it was the standard
Riverside that we made some modifications to in order to make it accessible. This
accessible version of the Riverside has begun to pop up alongside standard
Riversides in various parks within the city. Other benches from the accessible
line can also be found throughout the city, a number of Heritage benches sit
outside of Metro Hall and Contour benches can be found in Nathan Phillips
Square. To date the city has ordered 40 Accessible Riverside benches and over
50 other Accessible models.
The City of Hamilton is currently working on a multiyear
revitalization project of Gore Park. Another city we often work with, Hamilton
took an early interest in the Heritage bench when it was first introduced to
our product line. That bench has since become specified in the revitalization
project. They have also begun to
introduce our Accessible Riverside line as well and to date, 23 benches have
been purchased with more orders to come as the projects continue.
As accessibility continues to be our main focus in 2015, we
look forward to continuing to work with the cities of London, Toronto, and
Hamilton and we encourage other cities and towns to look to them as examples of
how to start incorporating Accessible site furniture in outdoor public spaces.
