# NI Building Regulations, Technical Booklet T: Inclusive Design and Accessibility
Technical Booklet T is the accessibility and inclusive design piece, making buildings and their surroundings usable by as many people as possible. It overlaps with Booklet M but goes broader, especially on public and commercial buildings.
1. What Booklet T covers
- Making buildings and their surroundings usable by disabled people, older people, and those with pushchairs.
- Tying together both external access (routes, gradients, surfaces) and internal features (doors, circulation, sanitary facilities) so they work as a whole.
- The overall accessibility strategy for certain building types, not just minimums.
2. Where you feel it
Booklet T bites hardest on:
- Public buildings · shops, offices, community centres, schools, healthcare.
- Blocks of flats and multi-unit resi where common areas must be accessible.
- Larger refurbs and change-of-use where accessibility is being improved.
You'll see it in: requirements for step-free access from site boundary/parking to main entrances, ramp and stair design for a wide range of users, and detailed expectations for accessible toilets, lifts and circulation.
3. What to do on site
Treat any accessibility-driven features on the drawings as non-negotiable compliance items, not nice extras. Don't delete or shrink them as "value engineering" without a proper redesign and sign-off, you're messing with the building's duties under T and wider equality law.
- Build ramps, stairs, landings, handrails, accessible WCs and lifts exactly as drawn · positions, widths, levels, heights.
- Keep external routes and thresholds to the levels and gradients shown · no surprise steps or lips that would stop a wheelchair or frame user.
- Get the designer to confirm which access strategy you're building to, and ask for the critical dimensions in writing.
Sources
- Building Regulations (Northern Ireland) Order 1979 · primary legislation.
- Technical Booklet T (NI) · Inclusive design and accessibility.
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