Accessibility Plan Review
Accessibility is the most-litigated and most-overlooked part of a plan set. It is also far easier and cheaper to fix on paper than after it is built in the field. A focused accessibility plan review before you submit for permit — or before you build — catches the problems while they are still a redline instead of a demand letter.
I review your plans against the 2025 California Building Code Chapter 11B and the 2010 ADA Standards. Where a project carries public or affordable-housing funding, that often brings additional overlapping requirements — HCD, TCAC, Section 504, Fair Housing, and others depending on the funding source — and I review against whichever apply to your specific project. You get a clear, organized comment letter that tells your design team exactly what needs to change and why, with the governing code section cited for every item.
Reviewed by a CASp, not a checklist
I am Stephen Twist, a Certified Access Specialist (CASp #393) and an ICC Certified Plans Examiner. I have been reviewing building plans since 2002.
My background includes full building-code plan review across all disciplines — structural, plumbing, electrical, fire and life safety, and accessibility. I focus on accessibility now, but that broader experience matters to your project: I understand how an accessibility requirement interacts with the rest of your plan set, not just in isolation. A fix I recommend accounts for how it lands on the other trades.
That combination — a CASp who also reads the whole code — is not common, and it is the reason my comments tend to be solutions rather than just flags.
New construction, remodels, and alterations
Whether you are building new or altering an existing space, accessibility applies — but the rules work differently for each, and remodels are where owners get caught off guard.
It is worth knowing that accessibility is not only a construction-permit issue. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, removing barriers in an existing facility can be an ongoing obligation regardless of whether you are building or renovating. Many owners assume that if they are not pulling a permit, the question does not apply to them. It can.
Altering one part of a building can trigger a requirement to upgrade the accessible path of travel leading to it — the route, the entrance, sometimes the restrooms and drinking fountains that serve the area. How far that obligation reaches depends on the value of your project and how the code’s hardship provisions apply, which is rarely obvious from the plans alone. Get it wrong in one direction and you have built more than required; get it wrong in the other and you have missed an upgrade that surfaces later as a complaint or a lawsuit.
When an alteration does trigger a path-of-travel upgrade, that path can carry other requirements with it — the entrance, and the restrooms, drinking fountains, and signs serving the altered area all have to be brought into compliance, up to the cost limits. Accessible parking is treated a little differently: the code does not list it as an automatic path-of-travel upgrade item the way it lists restrooms and fountains, but parking connects to that path and carries its own separate requirements that can come into play depending on what the project touches. Whether parking becomes an issue on your project is exactly the kind of thing the review sorts out.
Sorting out exactly what your specific alteration triggers is a large part of what a good accessibility review does.
The 20% rule, explained
If you are altering an existing building, you have probably heard that accessibility upgrades are “capped at 20%.” It is one of the most commonly misunderstood rules in California accessibility — even building officials and seasoned design professionals read it different ways.
The part that trips people up: that 20% figure is not a simple ceiling. Depending on the value of your project measured against a state threshold, and on how the enforcing agency treats hardship, it can either cap what you owe or set a minimum you cannot go below. Assuming it always means “I only ever have to spend 20%” is how plans end up either missing a required upgrade or over-committing to one that is not owed.
I wrote a plain-language explanation of how the rule actually works.
Read the full explanation: The 20% Rule and Path-of-Travel Exceptions
Three ways to work together
Plan Review
A straightforward accessibility review of your plan set, delivered as an organized comment letter, plus one backcheck of your corrected drawings. The right fit when you want a clean, thorough accessibility check before permit.
Plan Review Plus
Everything in Plan Review, plus a one-hour phone consultation to talk through the findings together and work through how to resolve the harder items. Useful when a project has a few conditions worth discussing rather than just reading in a letter.
Comprehensive
Everything in Plan Review Plus, plus extended consultation across the life of the project and priority access to construction-phase accessibility inspections (below). For projects where you want accessibility handled from drawings through finished construction.
Construction-phase accessibility inspections
Getting the plans right is only half of it. Accessibility gets buried during construction — the slope of a path of travel before the concrete pour, the height of an outlet or the blocking for a grab bar before the drywall goes up. Once it is covered, a mistake is expensive to uncover.
I offer accessibility observation at the critical stages — at form before the pour, at rough-in before cover, and at other milestones where compliance is about to be sealed behind finished work. Catching something at these stages does not make the fix free, but it makes it a fraction of what it costs once it is buried behind concrete or drywall. These visits are scheduled and priced per project, and they are available on their own or bundled with a Comprehensive plan review.
Note: construction-phase observation confirms that accessible elements are being built as reviewed. It is a verification service and is not a substitute for a full CASp inspection and CRASCA report on a completed facility, which I also provide separately.
The kind of work I do
A recent large affordable-housing development — 348 units across multiple buildings — required a full accessibility review spanning the architectural, civil, landscape and public right-of-way plans, measured against four overlapping standards at once: the 2025 CBC Chapter 11B, the 2010 ADA Standards, the state HCD and TCAC housing requirements, and the Fair Housing Act. The review caught a shortfall of more than thirty accessible parking spaces between what the code required and what the plans showed, among many other items — the kind of thing that is inexpensive to correct on paper and very expensive to correct after opening.
At the other end of the scale, a public marina dock-replacement project needed a tightly focused review of a single element — the accessible gangway — under ADA Title II. Not every review is a whole facility; sometimes it is one element you want checked, and that is a perfectly good reason to call.
Whether your project is a single element, one accessible route, or four quadrants of civil plans, the review is thorough and the comments are specific.
Thorough by method
I use AI-assisted analysis to check every sheet of your plan set systematically — nothing skimmed, nothing skipped. Then I verify and interpret every finding myself against the source code, because that is where judgment lives and where automated tools fall down. The technology helps make the review more complete and faster. The determinations, the interpretation, and the signature on the letter are mine.
This matters more than it used to. There are now automated tools that will flag accessibility items on a drawing, and they are useful for a first pass — but an unsupervised list of flags is not a review. Someone qualified still has to say which items are real, which are false alarms, which govern where two codes conflict, and which actually create legal exposure. That judgment is the service.
How pricing works
Every project is priced to its scope, because two projects of the same construction cost can be completely different amounts of review work. What drives the fee is accessibility complexity — the number of buildings and unit types, whether the review covers civil and landscape and right-of-way or architectural only, the funding overlay if the project is publicly financed, and the completeness and phase of the plans themselves. A clean 90% construction-document set from a strong design team is a straightforward review. An early or incomplete set takes more.
Because of that, I quote after seeing the plans, not before. Send me your set and I will send back a fixed-fee proposal laying out the scope, the fee, the number of backchecks included, and any assumptions. No obligation.
California and beyond
My CASp certification applies to work in California, where it carries specific legal protections for property owners. For projects in other states, I provide accessibility and code plan review against the federal ADA and your jurisdiction’s adopted building code. The credential is California-specific; the code expertise travels. If you have an out-of-state project, get in touch and I will tell you honestly what I can do for it.
Send me your plans
If you have a project coming up for permit, or a set you want reviewed before you build, get in touch. Tell me a little about the project and send the plans, and I will come back with a fixed-fee proposal.
Stephen Twist, CASp #393 · ICC Certified Plans Examiner
530-333-5118 · stwist@stci.hush.com
Accessibility plan review throughout California and nationwide.
Not sure you need a full review?
If you are an owner who simply wants to understand your own property, I also offer self-guided courses on inspecting specific accessibility elements, starting with accessible parking. See the course