Scope

We have considered on-street charging as well as charging at car parks, supermarkets, motorway service stations and forecourts.

Our guidance covers both fast and rapid charging units. See our page on charging speeds and connectors for details.

Our design guidance has been directly informed by the views and experiences of people with a wide range of accessibility needs, including those relating to mobility, strength, stamina, and dexterity – and by people using a range of mobility aids including walking sticks, crutches, walking frames and wheelchairs.

Read how we developed the design guidance for how we worked with people on this project, and see our page on mobility aids for more about these.

Our design guidance is based on charging for all types of journeys, from local trips to journeys of several hundred miles.

Instead, we offer clear design principles to improve the accessibility of current and future public charging, based on our in-depth research work with disabled people (see how we developed the design guidance for more information).

We provide practical approaches to accessible public charging based on direct evidence from disabled people and those close to them, but we do not provide exhaustive commentary on PAS 1899:2022 (opens in a new window).

PAS 1899:2022 (opens in a new window) provides dimensions for these, but we aim to show you, with real life examples, the difference you can make if you provide “enough space” and features at “the right height”.

The required provision of accessible charging spaces, including how many are dedicated disabled parking spaces, falls within the remit of OZEV (opens in a new window) (the UK Government’s Office for Zero Emission Vehicles).

This guidance covers accessibility issues around public EV charging, but some of the findings will be relevant to the design and installation of home chargers.

Wireless charging (where a vehicle is parked over a charging pad in the ground, instead of plugging it in) has significant potential to make public charging more accessible. However, wireless charging is not yet widely available and is unlikely to replace public wired charging altogether, so standard wired charging must be made more accessible for disabled people.

Our work has focussed on the design of the charging elements only and not on the design of the vehicles themselves.

Suggested content for apps on smartphones or on EV dashboards is mentioned briefly in our page on information about charging points, but we do not give guidance on app design.