Most conversations about ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance start and end with a checklist. After all, there are certain design elements that need to be checked off:
- The floor space around the entrance of your building must be clear
- Accessible hallways, aisles, or corridors must have a minimum width of 36”
- Work surfaces (like counters and desks) must be set at a height of 28” to 34”
- Controls and other switches must have a reach range of 15” to 48”
Numbers like these matter when designing an ADA compliant workplace and getting them wrong can be costly. This is especially the case in San Antonio, where many workplace projects involve adapting a historic downtown building or a working within a mid-century commercial space. You aren’t always working from a blank slate.
However, treating ADA compliance as a series of boxes to check off misses the point of why the Americans with Disabilities Act exists in the first place. When you take such a standard approach, you miss out on smart design opportunities, and you end up with the exact types of design issues you’re trying to correct. You get ramps tacked onto the back of the building, oversized bathroom stalls that feel more institutional than accessible, and workstations that single out the employees who use them.
At COREoi, we approach accessibility differently. Minimum code requirements are not just part of our design goals; they make up the foundation of our work. We believe the best workplace layouts are ones where accessibility is built into the plan so completely that it becomes invisible. There’s no separate path, no retrofit, no “accommodation” that announces itself; just a workplace that works for everyone who moves through it, in a building that reflects San Antonio’s character instead of fighting against it.
Compliance Is the Starting Line, Not the Finish
The Americans with Disabilities Act sets minimum standards for things like clearances, reach ranges, and route widths. Those standards are essential, but they were written to establish a base for the whole country to follow. They do not necessarily describe what good design looks like in a specific San Antonio building, one with its own footprint, its own age, and its own place in the surrounding neighborhood.
That gap is where a lot of local projects run into trouble. The city’s older commercial buildings, many of which were built decades before the ADA existed, have narrower hallways, tighter restroom cores, and entrances with grade changes that take a good amount of problem-solving to resolve gracefully. A hallway that technically meets the 36” minimum can still feel cramped once furniture, signage, and foot traffic are implemented. Having a single accessible entrance that meets the code can still result in one employee having to take a longer, more pronounced route just to get to their desk.
Something that’s compliant on paper isn’t always dignified in practice. In a city with as much character and pre-ADA building stock as San Antonio, that gap shows up more often than businesses expect. Designing beyond the minimum means asking the right questions at the outset of your design project.
Don’t just ask “what’s required to meet ADA standards?” Instead, you should ask “what would make my space work well for the widest range of people who’ll actually use it, every day, in this building, in this city?”
Universal Design Principles That Do More Than the Code Requires
There are handful of layout principles that can help make your workplace feel genuinely accessible and not just one that will pass inspections.
One Path for Everyone
There’s more to designing accessible paths than just meeting the 36” width requirement. Wherever possible, the most accessible route should be part of the main route, and not a separate one. This matters a lot when applying adaptive reuse to historic buildings.
It can be tempting to route an accessible path through a back entrance or through a service corridor simply because it’s easier to do. However, this can make the people who need to use it feel singled out, since it’s further out of the way. By comparison, when every employee and visitor uses the same entrance, the same circulation path, and the same amenities, accessibility stops being a special case. It simply becomes how the building works.
Generous, Not Minimum, Clearances
Sticking exactly to the minimum design requirements only works in theory. Real offices have furniture, plants, event signage, and people carrying different things. If you adhere too closely to the minimum requirements without any legroom, the workplace can become too tight of a fit after the space is actually furnished and occupied. This is a common issue in the more compact floor plates found in some of San Antonio’s older downtown and Southtown buildings.
Planning your space with margins above the minimum requirements will ensure your workplace is one with good traffic circulation, and not one that is simply compliant.
Height and Reach Ranges Applied Consistently
Counters, control systems, storage solutions, and workstation components need to be implemented within accessible reach ranges and height ranges. As we mentioned earlier, work surfaces must be at a height range of 28” to 34” tall, and control systems must be within a reach range of 15” to 48”. However, these requirements shouldn’t be limited to a single desk or a designated service point; you should apply them as a default across your floor plan.
This can done by done by implementing adjustable-height desking solutions, shared counters with lowered sections, and controls that can be reached from either a seated or standing position. By doing this, employees won’t have to go out of the way to request accommodation.
Sensory and Cognitive Considerations, Not Just Mobility
ADA compliance is often seen as something that helps people who have problems with mobility. However, these design decisions also affect employees with visual, auditory, or cognitive disabilities. Clear sightlines, consistent wayfinding solutions, programmable acoustics, and glare-free lighting all support accessibility in their own unique ways. This is particularly important in San Antonio’s sun-heavy climate, where glare and heat gain from windows can undermine both comfort and wayfinding if the workspace wasn’t planned around them. These considerations benefit every employee’s ability to focus and navigate the workspace with ease.
Flexibility Built into the Plan, Not Bolted on Later
As the workforce changes, your layout must be able to adapt to those changes. With San Antonio’s growing base of healthcare, government, education, and corporate workers, local workplaces must also plan for continued growth. A layout that incorporates adjustable furniture, reconfigurable workstations, and modular architectural walls can adapt as needs evolve. This helps you avoid disruptive and expensive retrofits every time new accommodations need to be met.
The Real Cost of Designing for Minimum Requirements
Retrofits are almost always more expensive, more disruptive, and less elegant than the original design project. Widening a doorway after the walls were built, relocating plumbing to meet clearance requirements in a tight restroom, reconfiguring a workstation “neighborhood” after the furniture was installed; these are all expensive endeavors. Not to mention, you technically paid for everything twice: once for the original build, and again for the corrections.
There’s also an additional cost: the message that a last-minute accommodation will send to employees. When accessibility is planned into the layout from day one, people will recognize it as a thoughtful design implementation. When it’s added after the fact, it tends to read as an afterthought, especially to the employees who need the accessible design elements.
Planning around accessibility during the earliest design decisions, such as furniture selection and layout planning, helps you avoid problems in the future. It’s also more efficient, as a thoughtful accessibility plan must work within historic preservation guidelines, existing structural constraints, or a landlord’s build-out standards. Accessibility requirements are far cheaper to satisfy as part of the original design plan.
Why This Belongs in the Design Conversation, Not Just the Compliance Review
Accessible design decisions touch upon nearly every category of workplace planning: furniture selection, height-adjustable desking, architectural walls, door clearances, wayfinding solutions, signage, acoustics, and technology implementation. That’s why we build accessibility into our process during the first conversations we have with our clients. We then account for it in future conversations about furniture, technology, and space planning.
Working out of our San Antonio showroom, our team gets to know how your organization works, while getting a feel for your existing workplace. From there, we design layouts, select furniture, and plan out traffic circulation with accessibility at the forefront.
Local businesses don’t need to follow a generic accessibility checklist. They need a design partner who understands this city’s buildings, its climate, and the specific challenges of designing accessible workplaces here. COREoi has spent years navigating that mix.
If you’re planning a new workplace layout or reconfiguring an existing one, COREoi can help you build accessibility into the plan from the start. That way, you avoid costly retrofits and end up with a space that’s better and more dignified for every one of your employees.
