Public Buildings and Facilities Challenges for Disabled Residents of Port City Nigeria

Against the background of the increasing problems of non-universality of public buildings resulting from the failure of various governmental agencies and inabilities of built environment professionals to consider the important and helpful facilities for the physically challenged in public buildings, the paper attempt to survey public buildings and effect of its deficient facilities on physically challenged facet of Port Harcourt population. Descriptive survey design was adopted for examination. The population comprised 500 public buildings through 23 neighbourhoods of Port Harcourt environs, Nigeria. A total of 100 public buildings were selected using the appropriate stratified random sampling technique. Public buildings and challenging relation of people with disabilities questionnaire (PBCRPDQ) was employed for data collection. The data collected were analysed using standard deviation and chi-square of goodness-of- fit for test at 0.05 significance level. The findings revealed that slop ramp (0.67), width of doors and manicure, wheelchair ramp and hand rail and guard rail etc are the necessary facilities lacking in the public buildings. In addition, the analysis publicized that deficiency of important facilities in public building had negative effect on people with disabilities at (x2 = 126.44, df 1, p = 0.05>0.00). Based on the findings of this research, it was recommended among other things that the government should take prompt action to resolve issues responsible for non-inclusion of crucial facilities that enhanced the accessibility of public buildings by the physically challenge persons especially at the planning and construction stages of such public buildings irrespective of the location and sizes.