Lighting and the Disability Discrimination Act
The DDA makes it a requirement for employers and anyone offering services to the public to ensure that they do not discriminate against any person with a disability. And that includes those with any kind of visual impairment.
As a lighting designer, this is a very difficult area to design for, as ‘visual impairment’ covers a wide spectrum of dis-ability. There can be no published guidelines for engineering a lighting solution when everyone concerned may display completely – often opposing - symptoms.
There are eye problems that can be helped by providing higher levels of illumination – but there are other problems where the opposite applies, and reduced levels of light are necessary. High contrast in a space can be a problem, but there are situations where too little differentiation can result in an indiscriminate visual ‘fog’. It becomes a serious design problem when symptoms in opposition to each other have to be dealt with equally.
So it’s important that the project designer/architect/client liaise with the lighting designer at the earliest opportunity to establish performance criteria for the lighting installation. Who is being designed for – what eventualities need to be designed in? These are not questions that can be left until the building is finished.
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John Bullock Lighting Design: 01305 889256
