From walking around your neighbourhood to entering the local supermarket, it’s likely you have seen detectable warning surfaces installed all around your city. Required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), detectable warning pavers enhance public safety not only for those with visual impairments, but for all members of the community. Protruding just millimetres from the ground, truncated domes provide non-visual cues of changes in surface or potential upcoming hazards.
As an important aspect of the ADA, and local building codes, ADA tiles enhance public safety in many ways.
1. Alerting the Public of Surface Changes
Detectable warning surfaces mark important transition points along the pedestrian path, such as transition to sidewalk to wheelchair ramp, or the beginning of a staircase.
Additionally, where the gentle slope of a sidewalk curb ramp makes it easy for persons using mobility aids, such as wheelchairs and walkers, to travel between roadways and curbed sidewalks, the subtle change in grade makes it difficult for persons with visual impairments to detect the entrance into roadways. The installation of detectable warning pavers, however, provides an easily detectable warning for pedestrians to pause, take in their surroundings and proceed with caution.
2. Alerting the Public of Potential Hazards
The ADA requires the installation of detectable warning surfaces in several key areas of public life, most notably curb ramps, transit platforms, stair landings and escalator approaches. This requirement ensures the visually impaired have adequate warning for potential upcoming hazards, such as the steep drop-off of transit platforms or the entrance into vehicular roadways.
ADA tiles can provide warning to persons without visual impairments too! Often times we get distracted by our phones or what’s going on around us, not paying attention to the pedestrian walkway. Truncated domes provide a tactile warning, and bring our attention back to the pedestrian pathway.
3. Provides Important Wayfinding Cues
Large open spaces such as transit concourses and lobbies can be difficult to navigate. Finding your way to the boarding platform or information desk can feel like an aimless journey. The use of truncated dome tiles and wayfinding bars, however, create a non-visual, easy to follow pathway.
Detectable warning surfaces are used to lead the public between spaces safely, and allows the visually impaired to navigate large, open spaces unaided. Truncated dome tiles are installed throughout the pathway to alert of the beginning, end and change of direction.
4. Provides Slip Resistance
In addition to the truncated domes, protruding just enough to provide a tactile warning, without causing a tripping hazard, detectable warning surfaces have a micro-texture which provides a non-slip grip in all weather conditions. This non-slip texture helps to improve pedestrian safety in wet, dry, snowy, and even icey conditions!
5. Eases Mobility
The carefully designed spacing between truncated domes in an ADA tile makes it easy for wheelchairs, walkers, strollers and other mobility aids to navigate the detectable warning tile, while still protruding enough to provide excellent underfoot detectability.
Required by the ADA, detectable warning surfaces are installed in several key areas of public to provide non-visual cues, and enhance safety for all members of the community!
Access® Tile offers the ultimate solution in detectable warning surfaces, provides a full range of ADA tiles to ensure a code compliant solution for every project! Our expertly engineered detectable warning pavers are available as replaceable cast in place tiles, which are the ideal solution for new projects, as well as surface applied tiles which can be used to easily retrofit existing surfaces. Additionally, Access® Tile offers directional wayfinding tiles and a range of radius tile sizes, perfect for pedestrian crossings.
Rely on Access® Tile to enhance the safety and accessibility of any project!
