BARRIER-FREE ACCESSIBILITY : CHALLENGES FACED AND MOTIVATORS

Abstract

Despite the incentives given by the government to aid the private building owners to retrofit to go barrier-free, a large number of private-owned buildings remained inaccessible to those who have difficulties in movement. The objectives of this research hence focuses on identifying and measuring the effectiveness of the motivators for barrier-free accessibility when used to deal with the challenges faced, and making recommendations to the building owners as well as to the government, to better encourage the building owners to go barrier-free. Private-owned buildings which are originally not accessible but applied successfully for the Accessibility Fund in order to go barrier-free are focused on. Literature reviews and interview with a Building and Construction Authority personnel are used to identify the challenges faced and the motivators, which are then used to formulate the questionnaire. 70 Questionnaire surveys are sent out, out of which 32 completed surveys are returned. The surveys are based on the perspectives of these building owners, where they are required to rank the challenges and motivators accordingly. The results are tabulated and discussed based on descriptive and inferential statistics. The overall findings show that there is significant strength of relationship between the challenges and motivators, which therefore supports the research hypothesis made. For each of the challenges faced, the top three motivators and success factors are identified and elaborated. The subjectivity of the data collected and the relatively low number of responses contribute to one of the main limitations of this research.