Identify which restroom elements or spaces are being altered and whether the project also changes an area containing a primary function. Altered features generally must meet accessibility requirements, while primary-function alterations can trigger a separate accessible path-of-travel duty. Restrooms usually are not primary-function areas themselves. Have the designer evaluate scope and feasibility before treating a cost threshold as an exemption.
Which requirements follow the altered work?
The Access Board's alteration guide explains that requirements apply to the elements or spaces altered. A complete room alteration has broader coverage than changing a few fixtures. Where full compliance is technically infeasible, the applicable alteration provisions still require compliance to the maximum extent feasible; inconvenience or a preference to keep the layout is not itself the standard's definition of technical infeasibility.
Use the commercial restroom accessibility overview for fixture details. Check the surrounding clearances, access and controls with the proposed fixture, rather than ordering it by seat height alone.
When does the separate path-of-travel duty arise?
DOJ's 28 CFR 36.403 addresses alterations affecting usability or access to an area containing a primary function. Its examples include dining areas and work areas. The path includes access to the altered area and the restrooms, telephones and drinking fountains serving it. Restrooms ordinarily are not primary-function areas, although providing restrooms can be a facility's primary purpose, such as a highway rest stop.
That distinction matters: changing a restroom element is not automatically the same trigger as altering the business's primary-function area. Conversely, keeping the restroom out of a dining-room remodeling contract does not necessarily remove a triggered path-of-travel obligation.
What does the 20 percent provision mean?
For the private facilities covered by Section 36.403, path-of-travel costs exceeding 20 percent of the primary-function alteration cost are deemed disproportionate. The rule still requires access improvements to the extent possible without disproportionate cost and gives priorities. It also addresses repeated smaller alterations; splitting a project is not a way to evade the duty.
This provision does not exempt the altered restroom work itself from its applicable technical requirements. Public entities and other facilities can have different applicable regulations. Have the designer establish coverage, costs, prior alterations and any documented feasibility limit.
Keep that decision with the tenant-improvement plans, including fixture-count requirements and the authority response. Where a restroom is designed for children, child-use dimensions require their own coordinated review.