Do Your Doors Comply?

Doors/accessways need to be visible to ensure that people can find them and safely move through them.

The Building Code of Australia provides specific requirements to ensure appropriate luminance contrast to identify doorways. Luminance contrast is the measure of “light reflected from one surface, compared to the light reflected from another surface”. Accordingly, to assist people with low vision, luminance contrast should be used as a design element to make specific building elements easier to identify.

If a glass in a door or side panel is not made apparent by stiles, rails, transoms, colonial bars, or other decorative treatment such as being opaque or patterned, the glass is required to be marked to make it visible by way of visual indicators.

Visual Indicators on Glazing

A contrasting strip is required on any frameless or fully glazed doorway and surrounding glazing which is not made apparent by stiles, rails, transoms, colonial bars, other components of the glazing system, or other decorative treatment, such as being opaque or patterned, the glass shall be marked to make if visible.

Any contrasting line on the glazing shall provide a minimum of 30% luminance contrast when viewed against the floor surface or surfaces within 2 m of the glazing on the opposite side.

Dots, unconnected patterns or shapes that do not provide high level of contrast do not meet the requirements.

The contrasting line shall be not less than 75mm wide and must extend across the full width of the glazing panel. The lower edge of the contrasting line must be located between 900mm and 1000mm above the plane of the finished floor level.