Abstract:
It is very difficult task in nature and a prevailing issue in the world today to provide a reasonable access for
differently abled people within any building. Specially, giving fair and impartial accessibility has become very
complex and an ongoing global issue. However, various policies and guidelines have been developed in
countries enabling buildings to be used by the differently abled people by building them in terms of ease of
access for emergency evacuation. Among the other buildings, healthcare facility has obtained the first concern
when considering its’ heavy use by differently abled people. Thus, this research was conducted with the purpose
of studying on the accessibility procedures of emergency evacuation for the differently abled people in public
buildings with special emphasis to public hospitals since the current evacuation means in healthcare sector are
not adequately developed based on the needs of differently abled people. The research was conducted using
case study method under qualitative phenomenon. Semi-structured interviews were conducted among building
professionals who had more than five years of experience in the field of accessibility to collect the data. Hence,
three public hospital buildings in Sri Lanka were selected. Accessibility procedures of emergency evacuation
and issues in existing practice were investigated related to safety and security, access to built environment and
access to communication in line with the National Policy on Disability for Sri Lanka. Case study data revealed
that not having predetermined procedure for evacuating differently abled people and less awareness on existing
safety and security procedures thus need special attention. Accordingly, a framework was developed to propose
the probable enhancements for the national policy. The enhanced policy can be used as a national strategy to
assure the ease of accessibility of emergency evacuation for differently abled people in public hospital buildings
in Sri Lanka.
