It's imperative that all business owners strive to make their establishment accessible to people with disabilities. Aside from the fact that you have a legal obligation to ensure that disabled people can get into your facility, lack of accessibility could cost you customers. One of the biggest access barriers for those with disabilities affecting their mobility is parking. By making improvements to your car park, you can ensure disabled people can frequent your business. Of course, it's not always possible to renovate your entire car park. If you're looking to improve accessibility on a budget, here are 3 relatively low-cost ways to do so.
Reserve Spaces for Mobility Impaired Patrons
One of the best ways to help disabled people access your business is to reserve the most accessible parking spaces for them. Generally, an ideal parking space for a person with mobility impairments will be close to the entrance of your building and flush with the paving leading to the entrance. If you have parking spaces that meet one or both of these criteria, ensure they're available for disabled people to use by marking them with the International Symbol of Access. The symbol depicts a wheelchair user and is widely recognised across the world as representing disability. You can mark these spaces by purchasing an ISA line marking stencil and painting the symbol onto them.
Make Disabled Parking Spaces Wider
Another way to use affordable line marking stencils to make your car park more accessible is by remarking your selected disabled parking spaces to make them wider. Whether they need space to retrieve mobility aids or extra room to exit their vehicle, many people with disabilities require larger than average parking spaces. If, for example, you have 4 disabled parking spaces in a row, it may be a good idea to turn those 4 spaces into 3. You can do this by grinding or blasting off the existing lines and using stencils to mark new lines that separate the area into fewer, larger spaces.
Put Up Signage to Mark the Spaces
Once you've made changes to your car park, you need to make sure your customers know about it and can find the newly accessible parking spaces. Consider putting signs up in and outside your car park that show there's disabled parking available. Alongside drawing in patrons with impairments, these signs will also help people who also suffer from visual or developmental disabilities to find their way around. Signs are also a great way to inform able-bodied customers of disability parking rules. If, for example, you require visitors to hold an Australian Disability Parking Permit to use your disabled parking spaces in order to prevent abuse, you can list this on the sign to reduce how much enforcing you need to do.
Contact a company like A1 Roadlines Pty. Ltd to find out more about stencil options.
Share