Accessibility Upgrades in Multimedia Presentation Rooms
Compiled by Pete Woodworth, CTS
Cal Poly Media Services
We have chosen Liberty brand adjustable-height accessibility desks from Spectrum Furniture. The standard desks are 48"W x 30"D as shown here, but we have ordered custom desktops up to 72" wide (seen below) to allow for multiple monitors, keyboards, document camera, touch panel, etc. We are replacing the Crestron touch panels with Extron Medialink systems.
In one room we will be using a mini Mac and mini Dell PC rather than the towers shown here. That will allow me to raise the computer shelf up nearly to desk height and ensure breathing room for the additional switching gear.
The first three rooms use inexpensive 48" racks from Middle Atlantic (black, no frills), but later rooms use superb racks from California Chassis because of a greater number of options and colors available (hate their website, though). Here is the wiring functional drawing for the first three rooms (580KB .jpg). These three are scheduled for installation in June.
The drawing above is an early rendition with 48" desk width (too small) and the control panel will not be mounted in the rack. I decided to use an Extron MLC desktop controller since I had a lot of desktop real estate available; it seemed that this would make resource switching easier for all users as well. The 46" height is important as it is the maximum front-address reach height for a person in a wheelchair. There is a good reference drawing in the back of the SPControls installation prep drawing (169 KB.pdf).
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The layout for the desk and the equipment rack is the same as the three other rooms and also worked as planned. The adjustable-height table from Spectrum Furniture is quite popular as it can easily adjust for for both standing and seated users. Room 03-213, shown here, required additional rack access and mounting options, so I specified a rack from California Chassis. They also provided a custom "bronze" paint job which looks great in this room. Since this picture was taken, we have added a second LCD monitor to the desk for preview functions. This room is controlled by a Crestron touch panel and controller, but we will probably change to an Extron Medialink system as below, and retain the Crestron system only for lighting control. |
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This rack houses, from top-to bottom:
Behind the lower panels are a slave RGB switcher, computer interfaces, UPS, etc. You can see a little of the Inline computer interface which is mounted under the edge of the desktop. |
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The three rooms with Middle Atlantic racks came out great and exactly as planned. The Extron Medialink controller sits on the desktop and it replaces a legacy Crestron touch panel and controller. |
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The rack securely houses, from top-to-bottom:
Behind the blank panels are the audio amps, UPS, listening assistance transmitter, closed-caption decoder, etc. You can see a little of the Inline computer interface which is mounted under the edge of the desktop. |
