Why Vancouver's Ban On Doorknobs Makes Complete Sense While the news out of Canada may be focused on Toronto at the moment, an even stranger story has come out from the West Coast: Vancouver has banned appeared as a brief item last week in the Vancouver Sun, but had actually been decided some time ago. The city, the only one in Canada that is allowed to set its own building codes, decreed the changes in its Accessible Housing Bylaw in September. As of March 2014, all new buildings built in the city will have to include levers In case you are unfamiliar, this is a doorknob, and this is a door lever. If you are not in the building trade, chances are the difference between the two probably seemsBut the concept behind Vancouver's ban is simple, and makes perfect sense: Door levers are easier to open for older people, people with injuries, or people with disabilities. "The door handle most inaccessible could be the round door knob
(which requires tight grasping and twisting to operate)," the Center for Independence of Individuals with Disabilities (CID) website, and suggests that doorknobs be replaced with levers. Vancouver's ban on doorknobs is based around the city's adoption of the concept of universal design, Jeff Lee wrote in The Vancouver Sun this weekend. “The old model was adaptation, or adapted design," Tim Stainton, a professor and director of the School of Social Work at the University of B.C., told Lee. "You took a space and you adapted for use of the person with aWhat universal design says is let’s turn it around and let’s just build everything so it is as usable by the largest segments of the population as possible.” Vancouver's ban won't mean the immediate end of doorknobs — it isn't retroactive, for one thing, so buildings currently featuring doorknobs will keep them, and there's no law on changing knobs to levers in your own home — but Lee notes that
Vancouver tends to influence Canada's building codes. You should also consider how many examples of universal design have subtly crept into your everyday life; ramps, low-floor buses, even things like closed-captioning for city's proposals go far beyond simple doorknobs, with things like wider doorways, lower light switches, and higher powerMaking things accessible for everyone makes sense toThe doorknob may be doomed. Get the Slide Deck from Henry Blodget's IGNITION Presentation on the Future of Digital Read Business Insider On The Go Available on iOS or Android See All Jobs » Thanks to our partnersCourtesy of raganmd via Flickr In a move to make housing more universally accessible, the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, has banned doorknobs in private homes and apartment buildings. Starting in March 2014, the doors of new buildings will be equipped instead with more ergonomically friendly, easier-to-use lever handles, the Vancouver Sun reports.
It notes that while the bylaw passed in September is not retroactive, City Hall has set an example by replacing its art deco brass doorknobs, which date from 1936. As University of British Columbia professor Tim Stainton explained in the article, the doorknob ban is in the spirit of a concept known as universal design, which holds that environments should be built to be usable by a majority of people regardless of age or capacity, rather than adapted to meet the needs of the elderly or disabled. Design that makes everyday things easy to use even for those with physical challenges is the same principle that IDEO designers used when redesigning an OXO Good Grips potato peeler to be easier to use for arthritics. The designers noted that the human-centered design exercise “solved a specific problem for a specific group: Namely, helping people with reduced grip strength to peel things easier. Turned out, it offered a benefit to everyone.” An article in Popular Science pointed out that turning doorknobs can be challenging for arthritic hands, citing a troubling statistic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that 67 million adult Americans will have arthritis by 2030.
With boomers living longer than ever it seems like the U.S. might want to follow Vancouver’s lead by adding private residences to the accessibility requirements that were established for public spaces with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. Courtesy of Graham Hellewell via Flickr The doorknob ban is part of a larger effort that will include installing levers on water faucets as well. It outlines other new requirements including wider doors, stairs, and hallways; and barrier-free or adaptable showers. Classic doorknob lovers need not fear, of course: You can always retrofit a new home’s levers with vintage doorknobs.New building rules will help old folks—who now risk being eaten by bearsIT IS rare for changes to a municipal building code to become headline news. But Vancouver’s ban on doorknobs in all new buildings, which went into effect last month, is an exception. It has provoked a strong reaction from the door-opening public and set off a chain reaction across the country as other jurisdictions ponder whether to follow Vancouver’s lead.
The country is on tenterhooks.The war on doorknobs is part of a broader campaign to make buildings more accessible to the elderly and disabled, many of whom find levered doorhandles easier to operate than fiddly knobs. Vancouver’s code adds private homes to rules already in place in most of Canada for large buildings, stipulating wider entry doors, lower thresholds and lever-operated taps in bathrooms and kitchens.The rules have provoked grumbling about the nanny state, much of it from doorknob manufacturers. The Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) complains that Vancouver, the only city in Canada with the power to determine its own building code (elsewhere it falls to provincial governments), changed the rules on its own, instead of asking for a revision of the national regulations, which would have triggered more detailed cost studies.These complaints pale in comparison to a more sinister worry. True, elderly and disabled people find it easier to operate doors with handles.
But so do bears. In British Columbia, bears have been known to scavenge for food inside cars—whose doors have handles, knob advocates point out. Pitkin County, Colorado, in the United States, has banned door levers on buildings for this very reason. One newspaper columnist in the pro-knob camp has noted that the velociraptors in “Jurassic Park” were able to open doors by their handles.Members of the municipal council in Halifax are considering asking their provincial government to follow Vancouver’s example. So too are councillors in Pickering, east of Toronto. The provincial government in Manitoba is examining how the new rules will work in Vancouver. Philip Rizcallah, who manages the federal body responsible for the national code, says he would be open to considering the measure. So far no one has asked.It seems only a matter of time before someone steps forward. Much publicity has been given to the ban, which plays to Vancouver’s offbeat reputation. “What are they smoking out there?” asks Gary Sharp of the CHBA.