When you lease or buy a space for your business, you’re focused on a thousand details: where you’ll put the registers, how you’ll manage inventory, or what the showroom will look like. You may pay little attention to the doors, but any part of ADA compliance is not something you want to put off.
Overlooking your doors’ accessibility compliance can end up being an expensive and time-consuming mistake. Every door in your business needs to adhere to Americans with ADA guidelines. Below, we highlight some of the ADA compliance requirements that are easy to miss.
An easy place to start is the width of your doors. A door’s opening must be at least 32 inches wide. This metric applies to all doors within your business, from the front entrance to a sliding door onto your patio to the doors in your changing room. Each door must also open to a full 90-degree angle or more.
The door should also be easy to open, with a maximum opening force of five pounds. This applies to traditional doors and sliding doors. If your door feels like it takes a little muscle power to open, but you’re not sure exactly how much, get a door force gauge. By holding the instrument against the door and pushing, you’ll get an exact read of how much pressure is required to open the door.
You also want to make sure your door doesn’t slam closed too quickly, as this could injure someone who is slowly moving through the door. You can easily time how quickly it takes for the door to close and compare it to ADA regulations, which state that it must take a minimum of five seconds to close from 90 degrees to 12 degrees.
Your door handle should be easy for anyone to use, regardless of grip strength or dexterity. Choose a door handle that can be turned with a loose grip without much force. The visitor shouldn’t have to twist or tightly grasp the door hardware to enter or exit.
The door handle should be positioned 34 to 48 inches above the ground to be within reach of those in wheelchairs as well as those using mobility aids. The threshold at the bottom of the door should also be less than half an inch tall.
When a fire door is on an accessible exit route, it needs to follow many of the same regulations as other doors in a business, including the required width and threshold height. However, there is an important difference.
Fire doors are required to self-close and self-latch to prevent the spread of a fire. To do this, a fire door may need an opening force of over five pounds. This is allowed under ADA rules. To ensure all people are able to open this door in the case of an emergency, an automatic door operator may need to be installed.
If your business is inspected and found to be non-compliant with ADA standards, you could face a $75,000 fine for your first offense. If further offenses are found, this fine could double to $150,000.
To ensure you are following all local and state requirements, review your state’s free resources for business owners. In California, you can also hire a Certified Accessibility Specialist (CASp) to inspect your space to point out violations and highlight where improvements can be made.
Need to swap out some doors with ADA-compliant options? At Union Door, we offer expert commercial door replacement that will meet all your ADA requirements. Contact us today to learn more about our inventory and fast installation options.
