Vertical Accessibility for Wheelchair Users at Historic Buildings

Introduction Historic buildings (HBs) have high cultural value and are considered as a form of national heritage and should therefore be conserved [1]. They are existing buildings, and a critical aspect of their conservation involves determining the appropriate levels of intervention done to them which include combination of many actions i.e., preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction. Numerous conservation principles have been established to provide guidance to conservators in effectively conserving these buildings. Nowadays, there are plenty of HBs, which people use in different functions or visiting as tourists. However, the wheelchair users suffer from the difficulty of accessing these buildings. Most countries issued anti-discrimination regulations and accessibility codes that offer to provide disabled people needs in buildings. Applying these codes is mandatory for new construction and existing buildings. Historic Buildings as a special type of existing buildings mostly are not exempted from accessibility Acts. Applying these codes is difficult because HBs characterized with special values. This situation caused a conflict between conservation legislation protecting the building and discrimination legislation protecting the rights of disabled people. Foster [2] presented this conflict as she stated, architectural conservation Acts that exempted and protected HBs from harmful access alterations, yet still attempts to find a balance between the goals of accessibility and conservation. However, Kose [3] tends to give priority to the accessibility than culture values as he stated that HBs must be usable by everyone such as visitors and persons who work there as staff. Denying people with disabilities from being employed is a violation of human rights. Therefore, the priority should not be given to the cultural values of HBs. Furthermore, the dilemma of vertical accessibility for wheelchair users in HBs was demonstrated by Smith [4]; who stated that HBs acquire several challenges when use in a different historical period. According to different priorities HBs’ new use could be different to the original one that was built for. The paper aims to study the existing accessibility solutions that were applied in HBs for wheelchair users and determine their suitability according to the approaches and principles of architectural conservation. The importance of the research resides in studying accessibility in heritage which is a new under-research subject. Careful examination of HBs' conservation approaches and beneficial accessibility solutions give lessons learned for intervention toward accessibility. This will also contribute to developing code of practice to improve accessibility into and within architectural heritage. References [1] Tarhuni, S. and Kamara, J. "Knowledge Management in Historic Buildings Conservation Organizations" , 2021 7th International Engineering Conference “Research & Innovation amid Global Pandemic" (IEC), 2021, pp. 101-106, Available at: https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/278280/055C7586-C7E7-4143-9B0C-62A74AF2DC3A.pdf [2] Foster, L. “Access to historic properties: A Look Forward”, Journal of Architectural Conservation, (1995 Published online 2014) 1:3, pp 55- 69 available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13556207.1995.10785145?needAccess=true [3] Kose, S. “How can we ensure accessibility of cultural heritage? Toward better utilization of existing assets in Japanese context” in I. Garofolo et al. (Eds.), the 6th International Conference on Universal Design, 7 - 9 September 2022 Brescia, Italy, pp. 435-442 [4] Smith, M. “The impact of the disability discrimination Act on historic buildings”, Journal of Building Appraisal, 2006, Volume 2, Issue 1, pp 52–61. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jba.2940038 [5] Tarhuni, S. “Evaluation of historic buildings reparation in Tripoli, Libya”, Journal of Architectural Engineering, 2020, Vol. 26, Issue 3, pp 1-7. American Society of Civil Engineers, Available at: https://ascelibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.1061/%28ASCE%29AE.1943-5568.0000427 [6] Glen, M. “the Application of Information Modelling to the Conservation of Historic Buildings”. Thesis. 2001, Newcastle University. Newcastle. [7] BS 7913, British Standards Institution, Guide to the principles of the conservation of historic buildings.