Proceedings of: Workshop on Improving Building Design for Persons with Low Vision

Issue 15: How can the potential conflict between the goals of zero net energy and accessibility for low vision persons be resolved?

Question by Jim Woods: Marsha, from your standpoint, from the accessibility perspective, what can we do about this potential conflict?

Response from Marsha Mazz: I don’t know yet. In regard to some of the concerns about involving the [accessibility] community, absolutely we have to. And I’ve already sent Eunice a contact for someone who certainly advocates with NFPA on stairway design issues, including lighting.

But we do have to work together with the competing interests, and if we don’t, we are going to be spinning our wheels. And they’re much bigger and much stronger than we are. They have far more influence than we have. And whenever we attempt to establish a standard – and I’ve said it 100 times already; I’ll just say it one more time – whenever we attempt to establish a standard that in any way impinges on the directions that those competing interests want to go in, we’re challenged on the basis of our support for that standard.

We are, I think, in the accessibility world, more and more being held to higher standards than the codes developers typically.

Question by Jim Woods: How about the responses [by the code developers]?

Response by Marsha Mazz: Just spend five minutes with me and the National Association of Homebuilders and you’ll see that. They demand substantiation for accessibility criteria when their own substantiation for what they want to do is [based on] opinion. And [their] opinion, seems to carry the day until you want to bring forward accessibility criteria.

Comment by Tom Williams: One of the things that I see happening is that there is no accommodation to build functional requirements throughout. And Kurt, you talked about the demands on hospitals and health care facilities. What I’m almost certain is going to be the wave of the future is finding ways of creating less efficient facilities by decentralizing, in order to reduce the energy consumption in a hospital, for example, is to move out services that are high-energy demand into new facilities that start from scratch. Although these requirements may be stringent, at least it’s a way of addressing it.

What it costs us in other energy consumption issues – travel between them, general efficiency of actually providing the service, and so on, is going to go by the wayside. My suspicion is that Congress’ rationale, other than looking good, is to inspire research into new products and materials that will provide or allow us to produce facilities that can respond to those reductions. I think the timeline is probably unrealistic, but that’s what I think is probably their justification for coming up with what appear to be some unreasonable requests.

I see a whole new way of providing healthcare services, not only for the VA but for others in areas where high energy consumption is required just to provide the service.

Response by [Participant]: Interestingly enough, the latest executive order on greenhouse gas reduction requires trying to calculate travel costs associated [with the] separate facilities. The environmental impact of car travel, as well as flying to different sites for staff, or paying people to come in and design projects, all that supposedly eventually will be tracked. How much environmental impact or greenhouse gas consumption that is.

Response by [Participant]: And then you have the low-vision consumer who has to get there with no transportation.