ARABIS, ANDRE NICHOLE D.

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE 1
BS- ARCH 3-5 3/22/2024

ACTIVITY NO.1 The Philippines has its own Accessibility Law. Is your home following the
Accessibility Law? Expound. Also, what provisions of the Accessibility Law is your home
violating? Enumerate and explain.

Before we came from our current house, we used to rent a house one barangay far from it. After
some saving and giving it some thought, my family decided to build our own house since it is
much more convenient, and it can save us more money than renting a house. Long story short,
my dad and a contractor made an agreement, and the house is now built. I only realized later
when I entered architecture that we did not hire engineers, even an architect but just a
contractor. But I don’t think he falls under contractor. He is just like has much more experience
as a construction worker compared to a normal construction worker. I don’t know how to label
him. But I understand why my father chose to trust this construction worker than hiring
professionals because it may cost him a lot. I remembered that some parts of our house have
been reused, like our windows and our roof that we are using now. Because of over limiting the
budget, our house resulted to a just enough to be able to live in. To answer the question, our
home did not follow the accessibility law.
Our house is divided into two parts: the terrace and our home itself. First is our terrace/ store, it
is elevated about 3 inches from the ground and the gate is not wide enough to be able to enter
by a person using wheelchair. It was not considered since none of our family uses wheelchairs.
Our floors are not slip resistant, being always prone for slip but not considered since my father
chose a tile that are cheap. Aside from our gate, the entrance of our two bedrooms, toilet and
bath are not wide enough. Since we’re talking about toilet and bath, we don’t even have a
lavatory and since our T&B’s entrance is not suitable for PWDs and it is not spacious, they can’t
use it. Our house is also obstructed with furniture since the sofa and chairs we’re using are not
suitable for our house. We don’t want to throw it away since it still can be used regardless of if
we have space to walk through or not. According to the BP 344 or the Accessibility law of the
Philippines, the turn about spaces should be provided at or within 3.50 meters. I don’t think our
walkway even reached 1.50 meters in width.