Accessibility in Strata: Ramps, Lifts, Disability Modifications and Ageing Residents

Accessibility in Strata: Ramps, Lifts, Disability Modifications and Ageing Residents

What this guide covers

• The legal framework around accessibility in Australian strata. The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth), AS 1428 design standards, and the National Construction Code Volume One access provisions.
• How modification approvals actually work in each state and territory, from NSW minor renovations to Queensland improvements by an occupier.
• Real cost ranges for the modifications committees see most often: ramps, automatic door operators, stair-climbing platforms, lift modernisation, audio induction loops, mobility scooter charging.
• How NDIS Home Modifications funding interacts with body corporate consent, and why funding won't flow until the strata approval is in writing.
• A committee process for handling an accessibility request without straying into discrimination, medical privacy or premature refusal.

Australian apartment buildings are ageing at the same time as their residents. A scheme that worked for a young owner-occupier group in 2006 is now home to people using walkers, wheelchairs, mobility scooters, oxygen concentrators and post-surgery aids. The buildings haven't changed. The residents have, and the law around how schemes must respond has tightened materially in the past five years.

Accessibility isn't a niche request from one resident anymore. It's an ordinary governance workflow. In our experience, committees that treat it that way produce better outcomes: fewer tribunal disputes, lower long-term capital cost, and more residents able to stay in homes they own.

Why accessibility is no longer optional

Three forces have moved this from the edges of strata governance to its centre.

First, demographic. The 2021 Census recorded that more than one in six Australians is now aged 65 or over, and the proportion is rising fastest in metropolitan apartment stock. Owner-occupiers who bought in the 1990s and 2000s are now in their seventies and eighties. Many want to stay where they are. The lift, the lobby door and the front step decide whether they can.

Second, the National Disability Insurance Scheme. NDIS funds Home Modifications for participants who need physical changes to live safely. Home Modifications cannot proceed without the consent of the property owner, which in strata almost always means the body corporate where any common property is touched. Schemes that refuse without a defensible reason now face a participant who has funding, a builder, an occupational therapist's report and the time to escalate.

Third, legal. The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) applies to common property in strata schemes. The Australian Human Rights Commission has accepted complaints against owners corporations for refusing reasonable accessibility modifications. Reasoning is straightforward. Common property is a service or facility provided to residents, and refusing to make it accessible without a sound basis can be unlawful discrimination.

Combined, that's a one-way ratchet. Refusing every modification request is no longer a viable strata strategy.

Lot vs common property: who can modify what

This is the question that decides almost every accessibility approval.

A modification inside the lot, like grab rails inside a bathroom, a hob-less shower, or a hallway widened by removing a non-structural wall, is the lot owner's project. They pay, they engage the trades, they hold the warranty. The body corporate's role is limited to whatever the modification touches outside the lot: waterproofing of common property below, structural elements, fire compartmentation, services in the slab.

A modification on common property is a different beast. Ramps at the entry, handrails down a corridor, an automatic door operator on the lobby door, charging points in the car park, tactile ground surface indicators at a stair edge. All owners corporation territory. The committee decides whether it goes ahead, sets the conditions, and either funds it from levies or accepts a lot owner contribution.

The grey zone is large. A through-door from the lobby into a lot has fixings on both sides. A ramp from the street to the lobby may sit on the title boundary. A bathroom modification can require waterproof penetrations into the slab, which is common property in most schemes. Practical rule: if any part of the modification touches the building outside the four interior surfaces of the lot, treat it as a common property approval and run the right process.

The legal framework: DDA, AS 1428 and the NCC

Three documents do most of the work.

Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth). Section 23 makes it unlawful to discriminate in the provision of access to premises that the public is entitled or allowed to enter. The Australian Human Rights Commission and tribunals have applied the DDA to common property in strata. The defence available to an owners corporation is "unjustifiable hardship", a high bar requiring evidence of disproportionate cost or operational impact, not just inconvenience or aesthetic preference. A blanket refusal without engaging with that test is the most common error committees make. Hand on heart, this is the one most committees get wrong.

AS 1428, Design for access and mobility. This is a suite of Australian Standards covering general requirements (AS 1428.1), tactile indicators (AS 1428.4.1), and means to assist orientation for people with vision impairment (AS 1428.4.2). For strata retrofits, AS 1428.1 sets the technical specifications that define what "accessible" actually means: door clear width of 850 mm, threshold heights, ramp gradients no steeper than 1:14 (with 1:20 preferred), handrail dimensions, slip-resistance ratings, circulation space at door approaches. A modification that's approved without reference to AS 1428 may not actually achieve access, and may need to be redone.

National Construction Code Volume One, Part D, Access and Egress. The NCC sets the access provisions for new buildings and major renovations. Class 2 buildings (residential apartments) must provide access from the principal point of entry to the entrance of every sole-occupancy unit on an accessible storey. The catch is the four-storey rule. Lifts aren't required in residential buildings where there are three or fewer storeys above the entry level. A four-storey walk-up built to NCC minimum has no obligation to install a lift. That single design choice is now the source of half the retrofit problems committees face.

The NCC governs new work. It does not retroactively require existing buildings to comply. The DDA, by contrast, applies to the building as it stands. Awkward combination. A building can be NCC-compliant for the year it was built and still produce DDA exposure now.

State-by-state approval pathways

Strata law sits over the top of the federal framework. Every state has its own mechanism for approving alterations to common property. The mechanism matters because it determines whether the request is a committee decision, a special resolution, or somewhere in between.

New South Wales

The Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) splits work to common property into three tiers: cosmetic work (s109), minor renovations (s110), and major work requiring a special resolution under s108.

Most accessibility modifications fall into s110 minor renovations or s108 major work. A grab rail on common property, a handrail along a corridor, or replacement of an internal door with a wider one is typically s110, owners corporation approval by ordinary resolution rather than a special resolution. A ramp, a stair-climbing platform, or any structural change usually triggers s108.

NSW also has the s132A pathway. An owner with a disability (or a household member with a disability) can apply for the owners corporation to authorise reasonable changes to common property. The owners corporation must consider the request and cannot refuse without good reason. NCAT can order the owners corporation to consent if a refusal is unreasonable.

Victoria

The Owners Corporations Act 2006 (Vic) requires owners corporation consent for alterations to common property. The consent threshold depends on the rules and the nature of the work. Most ordinary modifications are special resolutions of the owners corporation.

Victoria's model rules and the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic) overlay the strata approval. An owners corporation that refuses an accessibility modification without engaging with the disability discrimination provisions risks a complaint to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, which has jurisdiction parallel to the federal AHRC.

Queensland

The Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 (Qld), through its regulation modules, allows an occupier to apply to make an improvement to common property where the improvement is for the occupier's benefit. For modifications under a prescribed amount, the committee can approve. Above that threshold, a general meeting resolution is needed.

Queensland's regime is more permissive than most for accessibility-style modifications, particularly where the lot owner is funding the work and accepting the maintenance obligation. The committee should still set written conditions: who owns the modification, who insures it, who maintains it, and what happens if the lot is sold.

Western Australia

WA strata schemes operate under the Strata Titles Act 1985 (as amended in 2020). Modifications to common property require a strata company resolution, with the threshold depending on the scheme by-laws. An owner who wants to make a structural change generally needs a special resolution; a non-structural improvement may go through with an ordinary resolution.

WA has been more conservative than the eastern states on disability modifications, partly because of older scheme documents and partly because of less mature tribunal precedent. The DDA still applies, and a refusal should be defensible.

South Australia

South Australia has both strata corporations (Strata Titles Act 1988) and community titles. Accessibility modifications affecting common property are typically approved by special resolution of the corporation. In practice, older SA schemes often have very thin rules, and a modification request can become an opportunity to update by-laws at the next AGM.

Tasmania

The Strata Titles Act 1998 (Tas) governs common property modifications. Body corporate consent is required, usually by special resolution. Tasmanian schemes are smaller on average than mainland equivalents, and accessibility decisions tend to be more pragmatic. A four-lot building can usually have the conversation in a single meeting.

Australian Capital Territory

The Unit Titles (Management) Act 2011 (ACT) requires owners corporation consent for changes to common property. The ACT has a relatively progressive accessibility framework and the ACAT will hear disputes where consent has been unreasonably refused. The ACT Human Rights Act 2004 sits alongside the federal DDA.

Northern Territory

NT schemes are governed by the Unit Title Schemes Act 2009 (or the Unit Titles Act 1975 for older schemes). The scheme statement and by-laws need to be checked closely. Public guidance is thin, so committees should rely on the scheme documents and conservative process.

Lifts: the silent accessibility crisis

Every committee that owns a lift owns an accessibility risk. Two dimensions to that.

First, reliability. For a resident with mobility limitations, a lift outage isn't an inconvenience. It's house arrest. Committees should track outage frequency, response times and the duration of each outage, and whether the resident impact has been managed. A lift that fails three times in a winter month with a four-hour average attendance is an accessibility incident, not a maintenance log entry.

Second, modernisation. Lifts have a service life of around 25 to 30 years. A 1990s lift is approaching the point where parts are no longer manufactured, motor replacements take weeks rather than days, and the next breakdown can become a months-long outage. Lift modernisation typically costs $150,000 to $400,000 per car, with full replacement at the upper end of that range. The capital works plan should reflect that figure with a credible timeline.

The four-storey rule is the harder problem. A walk-up apartment building with three or four storeys above ground has no NCC requirement for a lift. Retrofitting one is rarely impossible but usually expensive. You'd think it'd be cheaper than it is: $300,000 to $800,000 for a small platform lift, more for a passenger lift requiring a new shaft. A retrofit can be subsidised by NDIS funding for an individual participant in some circumstances, but the body corporate decision is independent of the funding. Committees facing this should commission a feasibility study early, even if installation is years away. It sets expectations and starts the levy planning.

A real failure mode worth naming: the stranded resident. An elderly resident on the eighth floor leaves the building in the morning. The lift fails by lunchtime. They cannot return home. The neighbour who calls the strata manager finds a recorded message after hours. The contractor cannot attend until the next day. The resident sleeps at a relative's home, or, more commonly, climbs eight flights of stairs and produces a fall. Buildings should have a written welfare-check protocol: who calls vulnerable residents, who arranges alternative accommodation, who escalates to emergency services. The protocol costs nothing to write and reduces both human harm and committee liability.

Mobility scooters and charging: the fire-safety overlap

Mobility scooters create two problems that committees must solve together.

The access problem is simple. A resident with reduced mobility may rely on the scooter to leave the building. They need somewhere to park it, somewhere to charge it, and a path of travel that gets them from charging point to apartment door without a step or a heavy door.

The fire-safety problem is the same one that lithium-ion e-bikes have created. Mobility scooters use lithium-ion battery packs of similar or larger capacity than e-bikes. A thermal runaway event in an enclosed corridor or a small lobby behaves the same way. Insurers have begun to ask about scooter charging arrangements during renewal and to load premiums where the answer is unclear.

Committee response is to designate a charging location with the right environmental controls. Ideally a ventilated area on common property, away from egress paths, with an electrical circuit sized for the load and a smoke or heat detector on the same circuit. A purpose-built scooter charging station for a single user typically costs $1,500 to $4,000 installed; a two- or three-bay station with monitoring runs $6,000 to $15,000. The cost is small compared to the fire-loading exposure of ad hoc charging in apartments.

What committees should not do is force the resident into a workaround. Telling someone to charge in their lot when the lot has no suitable location creates a worse fire risk than a managed common-property arrangement. The decision belongs in the committee, not in the resident's hallway.

Doorways, handles and small wins

Most accessibility outcomes are achieved by unglamorous low-cost changes. Committees that focus only on lifts and ramps miss the small wins that affect more residents day to day.

Door force is the largest one. A heavy fire door with a stiff closer can be impassable for a resident with reduced grip strength. AS 1428.1 specifies an opening force of 20 N for non-fire doors. A door that meets fire requirements can usually be paired with an automatic door operator that delivers the same fire performance with a hands-free opening. Operators typically cost $3,000 to $8,000 installed per door, including the wireless trigger and the certified fire-rated hinge.

Lever handles in place of doorknobs cost $20 to $80 per handle and are standard accessibility upgrades. Visible-contrast skirting and door frames help residents with low vision. Tactile ground surface indicators at the top and bottom of stairs are required by AS 1428.4.1 in new work and inexpensive to retrofit.

Lighting matters more than committees expect. Lobbies and corridors that meet the bare minimum lux levels produce shadow zones that are hostile to residents with vision loss and dangerous for everyone after a fall. An LED upgrade often improves access while reducing the building's electricity bill. Fair enough, two wins for the price of one.

Audio induction loops in common rooms, typically $2,000 to $5,000 installed, let residents with hearing aids participate in committee meetings without straining. They're a quiet way to make AGMs accessible.

Liveable Housing Australia Silver, Gold and Platinum design guidelines provide a benchmark even for retrofits. Silver is the basic accessibility bar (clear paths, reinforced bathroom walls for future grab rails, level entries) and many of its features can be retrofitted at low cost. Gold and Platinum involve more substantial work, but the framework is useful as a target rather than a binary.

Bathroom modifications inside lots

The most common accessibility modification request is a bathroom upgrade. Hob-less shower, grab rails, a shower seat, a basin with knee clearance. These are inside the lot, but they almost always touch common property.

Waterproofing penetrates the floor slab, which is common property in nearly every scheme. Removing a hob requires reinstating the waterproof membrane to AS 3740 standards. Done badly, the next leak goes into the lot below, and the body corporate carries the dispute even though the modification was a lot owner's project.

The committee's interest is procedural, not substantive. Work should be done by a licensed waterproofer, certified to AS 3740, with a written warranty assigned to the lot owner, and with a copy of the waterproofing certificate held in the building records. A renovation approval that captures these conditions protects the building without obstructing the resident.

The committee approval process for an accessibility request

A defensible process has the same shape regardless of jurisdiction.

Receive the request in writing. A short form covering the modification proposed, the location, the contractor, the design standard followed (AS 1428.1 where relevant), and any supporting professional reports (occupational therapist, occupational therapist with NDIS letter, engineer). Don't ask for medical diagnoses. Ask for what the building needs to assess the work.

Identify the affected common property. Before the committee discusses anything else, establish which parts of the modification touch common property and which do not. The legal classification drives the rest of the process.

Commission technical advice where needed. Structural changes, fire-safety items and waterproofing items need engineering or specialist sign-off. The cost of this advice (typically $500 to $3,000) sits with the lot owner in most schemes, but the body corporate procures it for consistency.

Decide through the proper pathway. Committee resolution, special resolution at general meeting, or NCAT/equivalent application. The choice is set by the strata act, not by the chair's preference.

Record the approval, conditions and ongoing responsibility. Who owns the modification once installed. Who insures it. Who maintains it. What happens if the lot owner sells. What happens if the modification needs to be removed or upgraded in five years.

Avoid medical privacy creep. Resident health information should never appear in unredacted minutes, in newsletters, or in informal committee correspondence. The minimum information needed to assess the request is the only information that should be retained, and it should be held under the building's privacy practice.

Funding: NDIS Home Modifications and capital works

NDIS Home Modifications fund physical changes to a participant's home that allow them to live more independently. Funding is allocated through the participant's plan after an occupational therapist assessment. For strata participants, the OT report and the funding letter are usually accompanied by a builder's quote.

The funding will not flow until the property owner consents. In strata, that consent is the body corporate approval. A common failure mode: the participant receives funding, the body corporate delays for months, and the funding cycle ends without work commencing. A committee that takes accessibility requests seriously responds within weeks, not quarters.

The body corporate is not asked to fund the modification through NDIS. The participant's plan does that. What the committee may decide is whether to contribute to common property elements that benefit the building generally. A new ramp at the entry, an automatic door operator on the lobby door, an upgraded handrail along a corridor. More often than not, all of these are arguably building improvements that should be partly or fully funded from levies or capital works.

The capital works fund (sinking fund, in older terminology) is the right place for the building's share. A 10-year capital works plan that quietly ignores accessibility is increasingly indefensible. Plans should include a line for access upgrades, even a placeholder figure, so future committees inherit the obligation rather than discovering it.

Avoiding discrimination claims

Three patterns produce most of the discrimination complaints against owners corporations.

Refusing without engaging. A blanket no, with no consideration of the request, no technical assessment, no conditions discussed and no written reasons. This is the easiest case for a complainant to win. Even a respectful refusal with documented reasons is far more defensible.

Asking for too much medical information. Demanding diagnoses, medical histories or specialist letters that go beyond what the building needs to assess the modification. To be honest, this crosses into harassment and is unlawful in its own right.

Inconsistency. Approving one resident's modification and refusing a similar modification from another resident without a defensible distinction. Inconsistent decisions are read as discriminatory ones, even where the original intent was different.

The way to avoid all three is documented process. A written request form. A written assessment. Written reasons. Consistent thresholds. The same template applied to every request, regardless of who is asking. Anyone who's chaired a committee where an access request came up will recognise the pattern: the trouble starts when one decision is made informally and another, weeks later, is held to a different standard.

Common objections and extra checks

"We cannot afford it this year." Cost matters. It isn't a complete answer to an accessibility request. The committee should show it considered lower-cost interim measures, grant timing, staged capital works and whether the requested change can be approved with conditions rather than refused outright.

"No one else has asked for this." Accessibility work shouldn't depend on the number of current requests. An ageing building with lift outages, heavy entry doors or a stepped lobby already has a foreseeable access risk. The first request is usually evidence of a wider condition, not an isolated inconvenience.

Check who owns the ongoing maintenance. A ramp, door operator, charging point or bathroom modification should have a named maintenance owner before approval is finalised. The decision should say who pays for servicing, repair, removal at end of use and any damage caused by the installation.

Keep privacy separate from process. The committee may need enough information to understand the functional need and assess the proposed modification. It usually doesn't need a resident's diagnosis, medical history or private care arrangements recorded in general minutes.

Committee checklist

1. Confirm the building has a written accessibility request process and that residents know it exists.
2. Audit common property entries, lobbies, corridors, lifts, stairs and parking against AS 1428.1, even if no one has asked yet.
3. Review lift outage history for the last 24 months and identify whether modernisation is in the capital works plan.
4. Establish a designated mobility scooter and e-bike charging arrangement, with electrical and fire-safety review.
5. Add an accessibility line item to the 10-year capital works plan, even as a placeholder.
6. Document a stranded-resident welfare-check protocol for lift outages.
7. Train committee members on the difference between asking for relevant information and asking for medical history.
8. Keep accessibility decisions out of casual minutes; record them properly with conditions and ongoing responsibility.
9. Review insurance disclosure on charging stations, automatic doors and ramps at the next renewal.
10. Build the AS 1428 standard, the LHA Silver guidelines, and the relevant strata act provisions into the building's reference library so the next committee inherits the framework.

How UnitBuddy fits

Picture the committee that approves a hob-less shower for lot 7 in March, then the next year, with a different secretary and a half-rotated committee, gets an almost identical request from lot 12. Nobody can find the original conditions. Nobody remembers whether the waterproofing certificate was filed or whether maintenance responsibility was nailed down. The new request gets relitigated from scratch, the resident waits, and the OT report sits in limbo while the NDIS funding window ticks down. That's the gap UnitBuddy is built for.

For accessibility specifically, that single record holds:

• An accessibility request log capturing the date, the requester, the path of travel or fixture affected, and the type of modification proposed.
• Supporting documents attached to the request: OT report, NDIS Home Modifications quote, structural certificate, fire engineer's letter, access consultant's review.
• The committee decision, the by-law or rule reference, the conditions imposed and any maintenance, compensation or removal-on-end-of-tenure terms.
• The lift outage register: date, time, duration, contractor attendance, root cause. That register turns "the lift keeps failing" into a defensible capital works case at the next renewal.
• A welfare contact list for vulnerable residents, kept on an opt-in basis and separated from the public minutes.
• A capital works plan with a named access-upgrade line (door operators, tactile indicators, ramp resurfacing, lift modernisation) with budgeted dollar values and target years.
• Contractor and certifier records for installed equipment, with warranty periods and the recurring maintenance schedule.

Next request in, the committee isn't starting from a blank page. They can see what was approved on lot 7 last year, the conditions imposed and the outcome, applied consistently to the new request rather than relitigated each time.

UnitBuddy is built to support owners corporations and committees working alongside their strata manager, not around them. The strata manager continues to do what they do well: meeting calendar, levies, statutory filings, legal advice. UnitBuddy is the operational record that gives the committee institutional memory. For an accessibility decision, that memory is often the difference between a resident who stays in their home and a resident who moves out because the funding cycle ran down while the body corporate worked through its inbox.

Further reading

• VIC: Are owners corporations required to modify common property doors for accessibility? — via LookUpStrata
• QLD: Navigating disability access in Queensland bodies corporate — via LookUpStrata

Last updated: 5 May 2026. UnitBuddy publishes general information for Australian strata owners and committees. It is not legal, medical or accessibility design advice.