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Wheelchair Lifts offers the solution to a wide variety of your accessibility problems
Imagine that you arrive for work one day and your office building is suspended several feet above the ground. As you look upward, a feeling of helplessness overwhelms you because there is not a way for you to enter the building.
Sound far-fetched? Actually, it's not. This is the real-life dilemma disable people and people with mobility challenges confront on a daily basis. Buildings that do not provide access alternatives for people with disabilities might just as well be suspended 10 feet above the ground.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law on July 26, 1990, is changing this situation. Effective January 26, 1992, commercial facilities were required by law to be accessible to people with disabilities. To accomplish this goal, most buildings in the United States have several options - vertical platform (wheelchair) lifts, ramps or elevators. When selecting one of these alternatives, several factors should be considere3d: cost, space limitations, aesthetics, upkeep, ease of use, achieveability, building size and travel distance.
 Elevators are a viable solution in certain applications, such as heavy-duty, multi-level, interior settings. However, for shorter vertical rises, whether they are interior or exterior, they are often too costly and space prohibitive. Because such settings represent a large share of the accessibility problems in the real world, we have limited the following comparison to lifts and ramps.
A closer look at both ramps and lifts identifies some key differences.
Lifts Versus Ramps
While ramps may seem to provide a simple, straightforward solution to any accessibility problem, upon further analysis it becomes clear that in most cases the reverse is actually the case.
Whether it is an interior or an exterior accessibility compliance issue, ramps like elevators, require extensive space, are expensive, are hard for disabled people to use and can have poor aesthetics.
The ADAAG (Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines) are very specific about the use of ramps, and federal, state and local regulations governing the use of ramps abound. For instance, the angle of a ramp is referred to as the "slope." The slope is defined by the ratio of the vertical rise to the horizontal run. Since the slope of a ramp may not exceed 1:12 in order to comply, for every inch a ramp rises, it must include at least 12 inches of run or surface.
In addition, all landings must have a minimum clear length of 60 inches, and where a ramp changes direction, the landing must provide for at least 60 x 60 inches of clearance. Landings must be provided every 30 feet of ramp run for resting, at each turn, and at the top of the ramp to assist in the negotiation of doors and entrances.
Platform lifts, on the other hand, are better than ramps in nearly all areas - cost, space efficiency, maintenance and aesthetics. With a host of design and format options available, lift systems can be installed in anything from woodframe enclosures, like small elevators, to free-standing, attractive, atrium-style enclosures.
A Well-kept Secret
An often-asked question is, "If wheelchair lifts are so good, why aren't they more widely known?" There are two major reasons for this misconception.
First, few people are aware that platform lifts exist. Secondly, most people do not understand how lifts can be used and integrated into a variety of architectural surroundings.
The fact is that lifts have been successfully solving accessibility problems in the United States for more than 20 years, in a wide range of applications. As more and more people become aware of the important benefits that wheelchairs lifts deliver in a great many different applications, the popularity of these versatile and efficient system will grow accordingly.
Even those who are aware of wheelchair lifts often incorrectly assume that ramps would be less expensive. The accompanying graph (Figure 1) shows the initial costs of a wheelchair lift as compared to that of a ramp. Initial costs include all materials and estimated labor of installed lifts and ramps.
As the graph demonstrated, the initial costs of lifts are far easier to control than those of ramps. As the vertical rise increases, initial ramp costs quickly outpace those for a wheelchair lift.
Ramp costs are bases on a standard concrete ramp structure with steel handrails, built to ADAAG specifications. Lift costs are based on a "toe-guard telescoping" style wheelchair lift.
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