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Abstract
Background. Accessibility to public environment is the human right and basic need of each citizen and is one of the fundamental considerations for urban planning.
Purpose. The aim of this study is to determine the compliance of public buildings in central business districts (CBD) of Istanbul, Turkey, to wheelchair accessibility to the guidelines of the instrument and identify architectural barriers faced by wheelchair users.
Methods. This is a descriptive study of 26 public buildings in CBD of Istanbul. The instrument used is the adapted Useh, Moyo and Munyonga questionnaire to collect the data from direct observation and measurement. Descriptive statistics of simple percentages and means are used to explain the compliance to the guidelines of the instrument and wheelchair accessibility.
Results. The descriptive survey results indicate that wheelchair users experience many accessibility problems in public environment of the most urbanised city (cultural capital of Europe in 2010) in a developing country.
Conclusion. It is found that the major architectural barrier is the public transportation items with the lowest mean compliance (25%). Beside this, the most compliant to the instrument is entrance to building items with 79% as mean percentage. It is also found that there is an intention to improve accessibility when building construction period is investigated. This article describes the example of the compliance of public buildings accessibility when the country has legislation, but lacking regulations about accessibility for the wheelchair users.