Elaborating metrics for the accessibility of buildings

This paper presents a methodological approach for measuring building accessibility. Buildings are seen as service providers, and their accessibility is evaluated by defining a set of representative service paths, and measuring their quality. We will depart from existing methodologies, developed to measure location accessibility, and transpose them for use in the building domain, in an effort to propose a concrete way to audit building accessibility and lay down some analytical metrics for its measurement. Such methods may be instrumental in better and deeper understanding accessibility. They may enable tools to be developed, to help support decisions on embedding accessibility in new building design or in the course of a refurbishment process. We argue that it is not adequate to pursue a black or white approach to accessibility. In this sense, compliance to standards that, if observed, secure accessible paths in buildings is a very useful approach but does not fully unveil the essence of accessibility. Put simply, there can be large differences in accessibility even if standards are equally well or not well observed. We wish to elaborate on the subtle nature of these differences and to propose a framework to start measuring them.