Two different rules, often confused
Accessibility on a furniture project pulls from two separate places, and treating them as one requirement is where most plans go sideways.
The first is the built environment. The 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design govern the parts of your space the public reaches, and they are prescriptive. Dimensions, clearances, reach ranges. If you have a reception counter, a public waiting area, or a conference room outside visitors can use, that is the standard in play, and it applies whether or not anyone has asked.
The second is employment. Reasonable accommodation for an individual employee is a different obligation with a different shape. It is not a dimension you design to in advance. It is a conversation that happens when a specific person needs a specific thing, and it can land anywhere from a different chair to a rebuilt workstation.
The practical consequence is that you cannot satisfy both by adding one accessible desk in a corner. The public areas have to meet a standard on day one. The work areas have to be changeable on short notice, without a construction ticket, for a person you have not hired yet.
The numbers that govern a work surface
A handful of dimensions decide whether a workstation can be used from a wheelchair. They are worth knowing before a layout is approved, because most of them are fixed by the furniture, not by the building.
Work surface height, 28 to 34 inches above the floor. A standard fixed desk sits at 29 or 30 inches and clears this. A height-adjustable base clears it across its whole range, which is why adjustable bases quietly solve a lot of this problem.
Knee and toe clearance under the surface, 27 inches high at the front edge, 30 inches wide, and 19 inches deep. This is the one furniture breaks most often. A modesty panel set too low, a cross brace, a CPU holder, or a pedestal pushed under the surface all eat the clearance a drawing said was there.
Clear floor space at the workstation, 30 by 48 inches, positioned so somebody can actually pull up to the surface. On a tight benching layout this is the first casualty of adding one more seat.
Turning space in the work area, either a 60 inch circle or a T shaped turn. Reach ranges of 15 to 48 inches above the floor for anything a person has to operate, which includes power and data receptacles, not just the monitor.
Accessible routes of at least 36 inches between and around furniture. Circulation is furniture scope in practice, whatever the drawing set calls it.
Where furniture does the work
Once the dimensions are on the table, most of the answer is specification rather than construction.
Height-adjustable bases across a floor, not just at one seat. When every station moves between roughly 22 and 48 inches, an accommodation becomes a setting instead of a project. The cost difference per seat has narrowed enough that a full floor rollout is now an ordinary line item rather than a special request.
Seating with real adjustment range and a published weight capacity. A chair specified only on aesthetics tends to fit a narrow band of bodies. Pay attention to seat depth adjustment, arm height and width, and whether the cylinder stroke actually reaches the short and tall ends of your staff.
Clean undersides. Keep pedestals mobile rather than fixed, hang CPUs off the back of the surface rather than under it, and check where the raceway sits. Power at the front edge or on a surface mounted outlet keeps receptacles inside reach range without anyone crawling.
Reception counters that meet the public standard. A transaction surface no higher than 36 inches, at least 36 inches long, with knee clearance behind it if staff work seated. Building this into the reception specification is far cheaper than cutting a stone top later.
Storage placed inside reach. Shelves above 48 inches are decoration for some of your staff. Lateral files and low credenzas keep working contents where everybody can get them.
Planning it before anyone asks
The cheapest accessible floor is the one specified that way at the start. The most expensive is the one rebuilt in month three.
Design the clearances into the typical, not the exception. If the standard workstation clears knee space and sits on an adjustable base, you are done. If only two stations do, you have created a seating assignment problem for HR and a visible difference nobody wanted.
Keep a small amount of adjustability in reserve. A few spare adjustable bases, a couple of chairs with wider adjustment range, and a monitor arm inventory handle most requests in a week instead of a quarter.
Document what you specified. Surface heights, clearances, chair adjustment ranges and counter dimensions in a short record. When a question comes up two years later, the answer should not depend on who still works there.
Walk it with a tape measure after install. Drawings clear these dimensions all the time while the installed floor does not, usually because a pedestal moved or a panel run picked up an inch. We include this in our punch walk, and it is the fastest place to catch a clearance that drifted.
Bring your plan to the Hooksett showroom and measure the actual clearances before the order goes in. Sitting at a station and reaching for a receptacle tells you more in ten minutes than a specification review does in an hour.
