Andrew Houghton moderates a panel discussion with Kathryn Gibbs, Director of Engineering at MERCK, and Mike Perry, Architect and Principal of Progressive AE. The panel considers the impact of universal design on accessibility guidelines and laws, and stategies for establishing standards and processes that promote accessible and inclusive spaces.
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Accessibility at Scale Presentation
Transcript for Accessibility at Scale Presentation
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the accessibility plus conference, the case for universal design at work-- opening doors and empowering business. My name is Andy Houghton. I am the president of Disability Inclusion Solutions. I have used the wheelchair for mobility for the past 34 years. I'm a small business owner, certified disability-owned business enterprise through Disability:IN.
I've had the great pleasure over my career of working globally in foreign countries, developing programs and services and influencing policies that really help improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. So it's a delight to be with you today. And with that, I'd like to introduce our panelists and have them do a brief introduction of themselves. Why don't we start with you, Kathryn?
Hi, everybody. My name is Kathryn Gibbs. I am director of engineering at Merck. I've been with Merck for 29 years, and I am a universal design advocate for Merck. And I specialize in universal design in the built environment.
Well, thanks, Kathryn. Mike, why don't you take it away?
Yeah. Hello, everybody. My name is Mike Perry. I'm an architect and a principal at Progressive AE and really have been focusing our universal design consulting practice on designing spaces where everyone is given what they need to succeed. I'm licensed to 20 states and worked on projects all across the globe and look forward to presenting today.
Great. Well, thanks, everyone. You know, I think it's a good place to start is people always talk about accessibility in the workplace. And when we think about accessibility in the workplace, we typically think, at least here in the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Given that this is a global session that's going to be viewed by people from all over the world, I think we can use the ADA as a reference, which is the Americans with Disabilities Act.
But we all know every country has their own set of policies and laws and local governance around accessibility, and they vary across the board as we've learned through this process. But can we talk a little bit about what universal design is and how that universal design relates to accessibility guidelines and laws? Mike, maybe you could start out.
Sure, I'd be happy to. As I mentioned in my opener, it's really about designing for everybody, embracing everybody. While universal design is really grounded in ADA. I mean, ADA was a wonderful thing when it came out of the social movements of the '60s and was really implemented in the '90s, but it really creates kind of the framework and the backbone for universal design, although universal design does go further. And it really looks for differences in both physical and cognitive abilities, really thinking about everybody.
And that could be somebody with a visual impairment, hearing impairments, somebody who has autism is on the spectrum, maybe seasonal disorders, many, many different things. And so we really try to consider all of those things when we talk about universal design and kind of moving really beyond ADA.
Maybe one of you can talk a little bit about-- so let's use an example, like a restroom. We know in restrooms there are certain requirements for accessibility, but what are some of the specific universal design strategies that really make it inclusive to a greater number of people? Either Katherine or Mike.
So let me take that from Merck's perspective, and I have learned that this is truly a journey. And our restrooms, although they met ADA, now we have hand motions sensors, so no touch. And so you can just wave your hand, your arm or something in front so that the door's open. We do have a full length mirror.
We are we're thoughtful about where we place soap dispensers so that if somebody is in a mobility device, they don't have to reach too far. If somebody can't reach that far, we have all automatic fixtures for sink and even paper towel dispensers. So everything is now automatic. And we also now put a shelf in the restrooms so that if somebody wants to put something down and they can't hold it, they absolutely have that ability to do that.
When we talk about universal design, kind of gave a very high level kind of conceptual view of what universal design is. And you get maybe a little more specific and kind of touch on some of the key principles of universal design and how those apply to the workplace or to society in general.
Sure. so if we take a workplace example, a typical office building, it all starts with having access to the building, making sure that's accessible. Sometimes we'll see companies that have a great floor plans that are accessible but people can't get in the front door easily, as an example. So it starts with the front doors.
It starts as an automatic door. It starts with making sure there are no thresholds somebody enters. Even though ADA calls for half inch acceptable for threshold, universal design holds a 1/4 inch or less as an example. And then when somebody enters the building, way finding is really, really important. How do I find or I need to go in the building?
Entering the elevator, making sure there are also this audible identifying which floor you're about to come on to in case you have a visual impairment. And then once you enter the floor, making sure that the reception desk has two levels high, counter height and a low counter height, non-reflective surfaces used throughout people who have, again, visual issues or are sensitive to that. And making sure even at the workstation that it can be used by somebody with either a left hand or a right hand.
And controls, making sure that the controls can be used for whether it's turning on a light switch or adjusting the height of the desk. Someone who can use who doesn't have control of their hand, maybe they have a clenched fist. And even the supply air and the making sure it isn't right over the head of somebody and blowing on somebody. So it's all of those different strategies, Andy, that we use.
There are lots of details and specifically even in a situation where there's a panic in a building. Hopefully, we've never had a chance to experience that. But if you have, when there's a panic when there's a fire alarm goes off, people want to exit the building quickly. You know, it's just the way finding help you find the exits. The color of the flooring, the design of the lighting overhead, the location of the exit signs.
And I think the other strategy is a really, really important, one which seems to get forgotten sometimes is what is your plan to egress people out of a building on multiple floors that can't negotiate a stair. So there's a lot of strategies. They start with design elements, and they really move into facilities management principles.
When I think about universal design as a person who is a beneficiary of not only the ADA, but universal design, I think of intuitive use. I think of reduced repetitiveness. And so I also think of clear differentiation of where I'm going when it comes to way finding. I'm always challenged when it comes to signage, finding the accessible pathways, finding the way to get to a cafe within a building or the restroom within a building.
And so when I think universal design and what I've learned over this process is it really is as simple as things such as color contrast, change in texture of floorings, delineation of work spaces through change of texture, different color, contrasting color on door frames, extra signage. And so those are things that are really no cost when they're built into the initial design, conceptual design phase.
Kathryn, I know there's a lot of effort at that of color contrast and way finding at Merck. Can you talk a little bit about some of the stuff that you guys do at Merck and how it's impacted the workforce so far?
As you suggested, Andy, we are really looking at all aspects. And so we are changing the contrast of the emergency routes to exit doors versus an open office environment. We have contrasting colors at the corridor. We have contrasting colors on columns near windows, door frames. We are looking at strategies for different lights on those emergency egress paths. And there is a whole host of things that we are working on.
What we're really focusing on is looking at all of those strategies and how we can incorporate all of those early on in the design process because then it becomes really easy. The no-transition is something that we have also been doing, and we just need to coordinate that. And so we start that early. Even different entries into the building and different colors there so somebody could visually, very quickly, see where the entrance into a facility is. And again, carpet changes and ceiling changes at different specialty spaces.
So one of the things Mike and I hear all the time about universal design from global corporations is, where do you start? They have this concept that they feel pretty confident that they're meeting minimum ADA requirements, but when they want to implement the concept of universal design into their workforce, especially given the changing workforce following the pandemic or in the tail end of the pandemic, people are looking at the workplace through a different set of lenses. So I know Merck went through a very, very meticulous process, and we were able to help you do that. But can you talk a little bit about, Kathryn-- let's walk through the steps of this process and how it's really become part of your culture at Merck.
This doesn't happen overnight. It takes time and a lot of effort and education. So our journey started probably about four or five years ago where we wanted to, as a company, our culture, we wanted to fully embrace diversity and inclusion. And universal design is a strategy, again, on our built environment. We have facilities all around the globe, as you mentioned, Andy.
And so what we did was we took a baby-step approach. We did some pilots. We learned from those. We started educating people, our engineers, our IFM partners, our AE partners, and we learned together. And then as we saw people really understood and embraced universal design and this change that it was the right thing to do, right. We think about ADA which is great, but universal design goes one step further. As Mike said, it means for everyone.
And so with that, we really, again, started looking at the low-hanging fruit, the things that we could impact that were easy to impact-- the cafes and having drinks instead of all being laid out horizontally, laid out vertically so that anybody that was in a mobility device or couldn't reach, they had access to many different options. Then we started getting into meeting with teams on new projects.
And again, the simple thing is that if you spec out early on in early design before projects really start with some concepts of different lights on emergency routes, egress routes, different flooring materials, no transitions. Those things are easy to design. And then, of course, you have the wind with COVID with universal design. We have a lot of hands-free everything, right.
We talked about the entry into buildings being with a motion, with a wave button instead of a push button into restrooms key areas, touchless sinks and paper towel dispensers and things like that. And so then we started seeing success so we decided to create a company standard that embraces universal design. It is our universal design standard, and we put parameters around that standard on what kinds of projects and when they came forward for initiation, that they'd have a universal design review. And it's a really painless process.
And I like to emphasize the word painless because I'm sure just like Merck, all the people out there and the companies that you represent, people don't like extra work. And so painless as possible, it's, again, about educating them. And we developed-- we have a checklist that we go through. And really, universal design is not complicated.
It's about, again, educating the people out there, our partners, ourselves, our engineers. And when you look at the items, it truly comes out to good engineering practice. And so if you're an architect or an engineer that is just doing the right thing, you are going to hit a huge amount of items on our checklist anyway. And then the few others are things that, oh, we just-- people haven't thought about.
Mike mentioned the location of exit signs. Everybody puts them overhead, and that is a code requirement, as we do. But now not only do we have them overhead, we are putting them low. And that's just what you learn in an emergency, in a fire emergency. You learn to drop. Stop, drop, and roll, right. And now they're at a low level so people in a smoke condition would be able to see.
And taking the colored walls, the flooring differences, the special lighting differences with the exit signs, those are really simple things to do. We work around the globe with projects in doing universal design. Mike and Andy mentioned this, with ADA, it was a US-based program set of guides and requirements standards, and so when we look globally, we talk about works councils and what's right in specific countries. And we try to balance universal design with local country code and requirements.
And I think I can say that every year, every project gets easier and better. And again, we have incredible partners that have really embraced universal design. It's not that people don't want to do the right thing. Sometimes you just have to educate people to know what the right thing really is. And I learn each and every day and so our partners and engineers.
Those are great points, Kathryn. And I'd like to take a step back a little, Mike, and talk about-- there's hundreds and hundreds of universal design strategies. It would be impossible for a company to look at those strategies and implement every one. There's just so many variations within a corporate environment. I mean, Merck has laboratories and distribution and testing and training, education.
Talk a little bit about our process, Mike, and then how we start out and then where it takes us to get to a point where a company like Merck can establish, adopt standards that make sense based on the limitations of their particular footprint?
Sure. Well, I think Merck is a really great example. And in listening to Kathryn, it continues to reinforce her passion. And it really does take from the organization's perspective. It takes a leader like Kathryn to say this is important. And so we always start with trying to understand-- for instance, Merck is about improving lives. And once we understand that, we help educate.
We always start with education. We think it's important because in the end, like Merck, Merck wants to live its values. They want to continue to improve lives not only with the products that they produce, but also within their built environment. So we think it will make a really big difference once we understand the mission of the organization and to help educate that really the company will better represent the community and the world we live in by creating accessible and inclusive spaces.
And when you think about it big picture, universal design is really about a commitment. It's a commitment to embracing everyone and really valuing the diversity of people as part of the human experience. And so our process starts with understanding the mission. It's then that we definitely we educate, we help people see what is universal design, and help them look through a different set of lenses.
Remember, most architects and engineers, they design for the able-bodied individual. And so what we help the team see-- and what do we say the team see? Owners team, it's all of their stakeholders. It's the design partners. We help them look through a different set of lenses to realize that there are all of these design strategies out there that really better represent the world we live in, that one in five individuals has some form of disability. And it may or may not be disclosed.
So after the educational process, we will go through an assessment, basically. An assessment is we'll walk a project. We'll look at a set of plans. And again, we'll apply our lens of universal design to that project. Again, we'll develop a report which identifies here's where we think you're in compliance. Here's where we don't believe you're in compliance and here are the universal design strategies that will help you, as I said earlier, continue to live your values.
I think the one unique thing about what our lens that we look through, Kathryn mentioned it earlier, it's pretty simple. And so what we do is we apply two filters to every design strategy. We recommend to a client to reflect their values. And that's the user experience is the first lens and the cost is the second lens.
s in the end, we will be recommending what we call P1 strategies, priority one, and those are low or no cost but high impact to the organization, again, tying back to their values and their mission. And then we also have P2 strategies, which are more costly and probably innovative to the organization but continue to have high impact. So again, we really help organizations implement that low-hanging fruit to really create truly inclusive spaces in their built environment.
I think I mentioned, there are hundreds and hundreds of strategies, but, you know, at the end of the process through visiting several site for Merck, you know, we came up with a list of recommendations and observations. But ultimately, Merck, Kathryn and your team, your internal team said these are the strategies that are going to apply and that we're going to implement here as a policy. What are some of the factors that contributed to you identifying those ultimate strategies that were adopted?
Again, facilities around the world owned versus leased, and so there's certain things that we have control over, right, in a space, whether we own it or rent it-- lighting, flooring, paint, way finding. You have, though, when you get into leases with landlords and landlords again, it depends on what's included and how willing they are to do certain things. But for us, again, one-size-fits-all is not the approach because no two buildings are the same. They're not from an architectural perspective, but there are some common components that we do try.
And it's really on paint and way finding, lighting and flooring are really the ones that we've tried to standardize on. And then others, again, it depends on-- oh, furniture is another one where we have eased edges and sit-to-stand workstations now. So we keep evolving. Things that we can add in on every project, we do. And we look at every project with a clean fresh lens and perspective to see what can be done and is there something new that can be accomplished as well that we haven't done somewhere else just because the uniqueness of whatever the new location is.
Kathryn, on some projects, Merck has quite a few strategies as part of your policy, but I know that given the constraints of a particular project, you may only be able to implement five, six of those strategies. Can you talk about why it's still important to focus on implementing the strategies even though they're not the full adoption of your overall global standards?
Sure. Because everything we do, anything we do that can help make a workplace, the built environment more inclusive is something we just want to do. And again, the paint on the walls, something so simple, very cost effective, those strategies in an emergency could save a life, right.
And having the ability to have other people come in and everybody to be able to work in our facilities is really important to us and having them feel comfortable that our space, they don't have to-- if they don't want to self ID with something, they don't have to, but knowing that our space has been designed as inclusive as possible. Again, depending on the building of the location or the building type, we may not be able to hit every strategy, but we try to do is as many as possible for that specific project because, again, it does help. It certainly help and certainly improves the environment for our employees and our guests.
Kathryn, I noticed that-- I think a really, really good story is what you're doing with the Rahway campus. I mean, all of those older, somewhat historic buildings that are not built to today's standards, but I know that-- I think it's important to also maybe talk a little bit about what you're doing for an older campus to make it more inclusive but also some of the innovations you're coming up with. Like I noticed not too long ago, the conversation that we had about the handrail grip as an example, which is not used very, very often.
As Mike implied, I am working on a lot of projects in Rahway, New Jersey. We are renovating some older buildings that have a lot of character to the campus and buildings that are very important to our campus. And so as we have completely renovated these facilities, we have some buildings that were old. They didn't even have an accessible ramp to them.
And so we are starting really at the front door and working our way in and making sure all of the facilities have ramps or ADA accessible, but we're going one step beyond. So as you enter one of our buildings on the ramp, where the ramp part is, we actually don't have-- we've changed the color of our concrete and the ability to see the aggregate.
So if somebody has a visual impairment, you can see very quickly a difference in material on our concrete from a real smooth concrete to something that's a little different color and shows a little bit more aggregate, something easy. We are doing, as Mike mentioned, we are putting a grit to our handrails. Whether it's a ramp or it's our stairways, we are putting a sand in our paint and we are putting that grit on the start of the rail and at the end at a transition.
We've taken our stairways and we've changed the colors of the treads to the landings so there is an easy to see that we've changed, a transition. And so those little few strategies, those are good for anybody, for anybody, any Merck employee, any guest, whether there is a visual impairment, there's anything, that's a safety. We always say hold the hand rail for safety, right. Now you're holding the handrail and if you feel it from a flat to a grit, you'll know that there's a transition coming.
Those are some of the things I mentioned. We are putting exit lights low-high and low. All of our way finding is at an accessible height. Our signage, our schedulers, our rooms schedulers they're all mounted at the appropriate height. And those are things that are easy to do, but unless you ask the question on what's the right height, you could easily install them incorrectly.
Again, the colors, the surfaces but really from our entry in, everything is completely flush, no transitions, which you have to really coordinate to make sure in the field that the carpet is recessed in so it's flush from a corridor. And we have the right lights and white noise and all the different spaces that, again, we're creating spaces that if somebody with COVID, a lot of people have high anxiety, maybe are depressed, have ADD. We have spaces. We've created spaces-- focus rooms, privacy rooms, phone booths.
It really doesn't matter what you call them, but we have spaces where somebody can go close the door. They're multi-purpose. They do what the rooms suggest-- focus. That means some head down work. But if somebody has and needs to regroup because they're anxious, they can go in there without anybody knowing why they're in there and they can regroup. They could relax for a few minutes and know that our spaces are available for anybody for a multi purpose. So we've really also tried to create those kinds of environments, health and wellness rooms where somebody can go in and relax a little bit and kind of regroup, if you will, if they need to without anybody knowing anything different.
One of the exciting things as an individual with a disability and as somebody who's been helping you, Kathryn, through the process, one of the more exciting things to me is when we've worked with some of your partners over an extended period of time whereas at the beginning in reviewing plans and looking at plans, there were a lot of changes that we were recommending. But today, when we see the plans coming in from some of these partners, there's very few, if any, recommendations.
So your work not only impacts the people within the Merck world, but it impacts the architects, engineers, designers who are working for your partners who then take this knowledge and experience and hopefully implement it into their projects with some of their other clients. You know, I really think that's an incredible benefit as a result of this process.
And speaking of that, I think you mentioned eased corners. I think it also impacts your vendors in a big way because if you're procuring a particular product that may not exist, then you have such a demand in your buying power that your vendors have helped and they've adapted to your needs. And maybe you can just touch a little bit on that. And then, Mike, you can kick in because I know you have a great deal of experience in this area also.
So let me start really with the architects and engineers that support us, our partners, if you will. So you are correct. When we started this journey, again, it was all about education. We developed our standard. We hosted teleconferences, morning night video meetings to review and educate our folks, our, again, internal and/or external partners.
And so I think that was a huge help. And the fact that everybody believes this is the right thing to do and so they're learning. And the more projects we do over and over and over, it just becomes second hand, right? It's just when we first started with ADA. Nobody knew until you started to do and then you learned and it became that very routine, right.
It's becoming that way with universal design, the more we do with our partners. And the fact that even myself, I'll reach out to you or Mike at many times and say, hey, wait, and further ask questions. They do the same. So they reach out for questions. Hey, what do I do in this situation? Hey, I have a project in one building with one room and I don't know if I can do anything with it.
So they are curious. They are learning, and they are on this journey with us. From a partner perspective, it's great because now our AEs and even our CMs, they know what we're talking about. And so they are bringing this and using these strategies elsewhere, even our IFM providers, right. We partner, we have IFM providers.
Now they know and they ask questions. We even did some IFM training on maintaining a facility after it's built. So it's just, again, it's that education and learning, and it's an evolution. And we are certainly not at the end of our journey. We will never be at the end from a continuous improvement perspective. There is always more we can do as a company, as with our partners. And so we're going to continue every job we do more and more and we improve upon.
So I think that's great. And from a vendor partner, like a furniture provider, it's great because they're now seeing strategies, like we talked about the eased edge, the cubbies that are not so, from a reach perspective, that are not so far out there so somebody in a mobility device can reach to plug-in something at a, let's say, a conference room table. And they're starting to think about those things as well.
So I think it's got an incredible domino of impact effect, if you will. And it's something that every one of us can learn from and continue. And I'm very big. I've said it several times say on the education, but you can never over educate, right. Because there's always something that comes up over and over and over.
Thanks, Kathryn. We're about to wrap up here, Mike. Maybe you could touch a little bit on certification through the global Universal Design Commission. You know we're starting to see more and more companies reach out and want to achieve this level of certification, which is similar to lead or well concepts of certification. Can you talk a little bit about that, Mike?
So it's a pretty simple nine-step process the Global Universal Design Commission has. The key is to get a universal design professional involved if you're an organization. And so right at the onset, there's really some assessments that's done on the project and then key strategies. We've been talking about the P1 and the P2P strategies are established upfront and agreed upon.
The order says, yes, I'm going to implement those into my project, and that becomes the documentation and the first documentation for the commission going forward. And then really, it's the rule of the universal design professional to keep the communication link open between the organization and the commission.
And that project completion basically, the UD professional submits some paperwork expressing that the client has met the agreed upon strategies, there's been a conference and a final walkthrough of the project. So the commission that'll eventually grant certification has a chance to see the finished product. It's really a pretty simple nine-step process.
I would like to say I think that we believe universal design is the future. And as Andy and Kathryn have talked about, its real impact on the entire supply chain, and its impact is somewhat exponential as stakeholders understand it and are educated and then they start taking that to their other clients and their other projects. So it's just really, really good for everyone.
That brings our panel on universal design to an end. We want to thank Mike Perry, architect from Progressive AE and Kathryn Gibbs from Merck. We will be available for questions and answers immediately following this session. Have a great day.