Inclusive Emergency Planning

Seven Steps to Improving Disabled People’s Safety in an Emergency Evacuation

  1. Inclusive Building Emergency Evacuation Plans for every Building: Complete a Building Emergency Evacuation Plan form(link is external). Provide it to your building manager and DAC(link is external). 

  2. Inclusive Evacuation Signage: Install signage that contains the required campus elements, and has identifiers for all disability related items (designated waiting areas, evacuation chairs, accessible exits, etc). DAC, with consultation from Fire, Facilities and others, created these. This year Facilities hired a company that is manufacturing and installing the signage in core campus buildings. Find out when yours will be done, and how you can help.

  3. Evacuation Chairs: Check to ensure there is an evacuation chair on the first floor of your building- two if it is a particularly large building. DAC can help you pick a chair(s) to buy if you don’t have them already. If a student during consultation requests a chair adjacent to their room, you will be notified and that should be provided.

  4. Accessible Assembly Areas: Confirm the location of your post-evacuation Assembly Area, and determine if it is accessible to those using mobility devices or who are Blind. Consider determining and disseminating the Assembly Area's 'What3Words(link is external)' location so Blind people can more easily find it after evacuation (What3Words is a web application that provides geolocation for unaddressed spaces).

  5. Disabled People’s Self Identification Questionnaire: Remind everyone in your building that if they identify as disabled and think they’ll need help in an emergency, they should fill out the questionnaire. It tells first responders, building managers, EHS, OEM and DAC where on campus disabled people live, work and learn, how to evacuate them, if they have a support or service animal that will require evacuation, etc. 

  6. Personalized Consultations: These consultations empower disabled people to prepare for evacuation, including making a list for a go-bag, downloading ‘text 911’ and ‘Warn Me’ on phones, and taking other important preparatory steps. DAC created a consultation module and meets with disabled employees and students to execute it in real time, on request. Remind everyone in your building that if they identify as disabled, they can request a consultation on the questionnaire or the DAC website(link is external).

  7. Drills: Hold a building emergency evacuation drill annually. Always include evacuation of a volunteer with an evacuation chair. You can learn how to do so in this slide deck and in these videos of the evacuation using an evacuation chair(link is external), and using What3Words to locate an Assembly Area (link is external)after exiting the building.


You can also have people in your building take this short training on Evacuation and Safety Plans (link is external)that is part of the ADA Self-Evaluation training bundle developed by DAC.