The smell of freshly roasted coffee might not be the only thing that grabs your attention when you enter the new Starbucks in Washington, D.C.’s Union Market District. The store is the first to incorporate Starbucks’ Inclusive Spaces Framework, designed to go beyond ADA compliance and expand independence, choice and access for employees and customers.

The Inclusive Spaces Framework was created in partnership with a diverse community of customers, employees and accessibility experts. Rosemarie Rossetti, a wheelchair user with paraplegia and an accessibility consultant, was part of a team that met for five weeks to develop innovative ideas on how to address accessibility pain-points in the employee experience.

“Each week we reviewed specific workstations in a Starbucks store, things such as working in the drive-thru, warming up food, or making cold or hot beverages,” says Rossetti. “Then we brainstormed in-depth and documented our ideas on how various tasks, pieces of equipment and the physical store could be designed to improve the experience for a wide range of employees, including people with different types of disabilities.”

As a result, some of the new physical and digital features Starbucks plans to implement include:

• Power-operated doors installed wherever possible, that include a longer vertical push button that is easier to activate from more heights and angles, designed to reduce the effort required to open the door. 
• Optimized acoustics and lighting to help create a more inclusive auditory and visual experience for customers and employees.
• A portable point-of-sale ordering system with an adjustable-angle stand for better visibility, and an intuitive and customizable layout. The POS system offers voice assist and screen magnification, shows images of menu items to support language diversity and provides visual order-confirmation to help ensure that orders are correct.    
• Lower counters with overhangs to accommodate wheelchair access and support better communication when picking up food and beverages. 
• Unobstructed pedestrian paths with open sight-lines, and barrier-free pathways with more accessible store layouts.  
• A 3-in-1 bathroom device that dispenses water and soap and dries hands — designed to limit the amount of reaching required to wash hands.

Starbucks aims to expand accessibility and inclusion by incorporating the Inclusive Spaces Framework in all newly built and renovated Starbucks company-operated stores in the U.S.

“At Starbucks, we have challenged ourselves to imagine what’s possible when we take a closer look at all the many ways our partners and customers interact with us and experience our stores every day,” says Katie Young, senior vice president of store operations. “Building and scaling an Inclusive Store Framework is central to our mission of connection and will lead to greater access for all.”

The framework will also be open-sourced to help expand accessibility throughout business districts. “I think it’s exciting that Starbucks is making this framework open-source to further develop it with other companies and expand its use across the retail industry,” says Rossetti. “Businesses have a critical role to play to go beyond compliance-based design and ensure their products and environments are places where everyone feels welcome.”