Home accessibilityAreas of the Home That Can Improve the Accessibility
In a perfect world, all homes would be built, so they are accessible for people with disabilities. While many homes are not built with accessibility in mind, you can make changes to them to improve their accessibility level. Here are the areas of most homes that can be improved for accessibility reasons.
- Keep an Open Floor Plan
Even if your home does not have a completely open floor plan, think about arranging the furniture in a way that opens up the floor space. Look around all the rooms, hallways, and bathrooms for areas that could be a problem for accessibility. Removing clutter can also help with accessibility. There are also portable wheelchair ramps that allow for accessibility for wheelchairs inside of the home.
- Flooring
Both power chairs and wheelchairs move around more smoothly when they are on hard surfaces like hardwood or tile floors, than carpeting. Another problem with carpeting is in areas that have heavy traffic, the padding wears down and leaves tracks. Flooring is an important step to improving the accessibility of a home.
- Accessibility for entryways
Getting inside of a house is important, and there are many ways that you can make your home accessible. Think about the area that has least amount of steps, and room for a wheelchair ramp. Wheelchair ramps do not have to be large, or even insight. Many people are moving their wheel chair ramps into their garage or back deck, as these need much smaller ramps, and are in areas that are safer to use.
- Tight Spaces.
Most home’s doorways are only 30 inches wide, and this is a problem since most wheelchairs are between 24 and 30 inches wide. You should be able to travel through a door in a simple and safe manner. For most wheelchairs, you should have doorways that are 36 inches. There are homes and apartments that have these doors built in, but you still should measure to make sure. If you have stairways in your home, you should think about adding a stair lift so you can travel safely around your home. There are stair lifts that fold up, so there is space when you are not using the lift. The bathroom also has to be larger since you need to be able to turn around in a wheelchair. Walk in/wheel in showers are also great options, as you do not need to worry about falling into a tub.
Having a home that is designed with accessibility in mind is hard to find. However, you can improve the accessibility of any home with some work, and thinking outside of the box. There are many items that you can change in a house to make it more accessible, without making huge changes.i
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