Most property managers who audit ADA compliance stop at the parking stalls. They count accessible spaces, check the access aisle width, confirm the signage is mounted high enough, and call it done. But the stall is only the beginning of what the standards cover. What matters just as much is the accessible route — the continuous path from that stall to the building entrance — and it fails far more often than the striping does, because it is made of concrete and asphalt that move, settle, and crack every year.
An accessible route has to be continuous and unobstructed from the access aisle to the door. That means no steps, no lips, no gaps a wheelchair caster can drop into. In practice, three things break it on an existing property. The first is a settled sidewalk panel that creates a vertical change in level at a joint. The second is a curb ramp that has heaved or cracked until its slope no longer runs the way it was poured. The third is an obstruction that was never part of the design — a wheel stop that drifted, a bollard added later, a landscape bed that grew into the path, or a trash corral dropped where the walkway used to be clear.
Curb ramps deserve their own look. A ramp is a small piece of concrete doing precise work: it has to land flush with the pavement at the bottom, hold a consistent running slope, and keep its side flares walkable. Concrete settles unevenly, and the bottom of the ramp is exactly where water collects and the base washes out. A ramp that was compliant when it was poured can develop a lip at the gutter line within a few freeze-thaw cycles. When you inspect one, look for a gap or step where the ramp meets the asphalt, cracking through the ramp body, ponded water at the base, and detectable warning surfaces — the truncated dome panels — that have loosened, faded, or gone missing entirely.
Slope is the part nobody measures. Accessible stalls and access aisles are supposed to be close to level in every direction, and the route itself has to stay within limits both along its length and across its width. Nobody eyeballs this accurately. A lot that drains well can still have a stall or a stretch of walkway that has settled out of tolerance, and you will not see it standing there. A contractor with a smart level can check actual slopes during a walk-through in a few minutes, which is worth doing before you spend money resurfacing an area you may need to regrade instead.
The reason to treat this as maintenance rather than paperwork is that most of these failures are cheap while they are small. A single settled sidewalk panel can be removed and repoured. A ramp that has lost its landing can be saw-cut and rebuilt without touching the walk behind it. Missing dome panels can be replaced. Wait until several panels have moved, the ramp has broken up, and the asphalt at the base has failed, and you are rebuilding an entire approach — usually on a deadline set by someone other than you.
The practical move is to add the route to the same inspection walk you already do for pavement. Park in the accessible stall, then travel the path to the door the way someone using a wheelchair would, and note every joint, lip, ramp, and obstruction along the way. Anything you flag can be evaluated properly on a site visit, and ADA concrete work is usually scheduled alongside the asphalt repairs you were planning anyway. A free assessment will sort the list into genuine barriers and cosmetic items, with a written quote for the ones that need to move first.