Providing Accommodations for Special Needs Participants of Fairs And Festivals

Providing Accommodations for Special Needs Participants of Fairs And Festivals.

If you run or coordinate a festival that's open to the public, you may need to make accommodations to people with disabilities. While the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Acts can allow some leeway, it's generally easier to go with the accommodation than to try and fight them. They may not always be fair, but the overall hassle of putting in special ramps for wheelchairs is always less than the hassle of fighting the government on this issue.

While there are numerous federal guidelines on making accessible spaces work, most of them boil down to common sense. Among the most commonly overlooked ones:

1. Make sure that there's enough floor space for allow a wheel chair to make a smooth U-turn. This is, in rough terms, a space of about 5 feet by 6 feet.

2. Make sure that access ramps have a slope of not greater than 1 foot of rise per 12 feet of causeway. This is a fairly shallow grade, and may require switchbacks for an interior setup.

3. If you're getting amenities set into the site, make sure that all the bathrooms have at least one handicap accessible stall. Likewise, make sure that water fountains, tables and shelves have options that are accessible for someone in a wheelchair. In particular, for outdoor festivals, make sure that the outdoor toilets are set up carefully and readily accessible, meeting the guidelines above for the space needed to back up and turn around in them.

4. If you're expecting to accommodate people who are blind or visually impaired, make sure that regularly accessed walkways are cleared of obstructions, make sure that any elevators and door ways are labeled in Braille, and otherwise, talk to your EEOC office.

5. Make sure that handrails are accessible, and clearly marked. In particular, remember that access ramps have to have handrails for people in walkers and using canes.

While much of this will be covered by whatever venue you're working within for your festival, do take an extra day out to walk around the site and note problem areas from an access capability standpoint. For events above a given size, it's often worth it to hire a sign language interpreter; if this is done, they will need a place to work, with clear sightlines from a designated section of the audience. This is particularly important for public festivals with speakers and guest lecturers.

Vast amounts of guidelines on this have been published by the Federal government, and should be consulted when setting this up.

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