Accessibility for Disabled friendly Homes

When buying a home, the two most important things to keep in mind are safety and the basic needs of the people who will live there. If you have a family member with special needs, it’s important to find a home with Accessibility that make it easy for them to live there.

Most of the time, architectural changes are needed to make a home more accessible. Still, some modifications to furniture, shelves, cabinets, and even electronic devices in the home can make life easier for a disabled person. How accessible a home is depends on what kind of a person has and how bad it is. A home that is friendly to people with disabilities lets them do what they want as independently as possible.

Some of the most important things about an accessible home are:

• Easy access to building entrances and exits
• Doors that are easy for people in wheelchairs to use
• Light switches, electrical outlets, and thermostats in easy-to-reach places
• Kitchens and bathrooms that are easy to get into with low counters and handrails.

Let’s look at some of these things in more depth.

The main goal of the Persons with Disabilities Act of 1996 is to give guidelines for creating the best living environments for people who can’t walk, can only move around in a wheelchair, or have trouble seeing or hearing. Some of the rules for making kitchens, bathrooms, and living rooms accessible that come from this law are:

Accessibility to Kitchen:

• To make it easy for wheelchairs to move around, the floor space should be at least 1.5 m wide.
• Worktops sinks, and cooking surfaces should be 780–800 mm above the ground. Adjustable countertops are one of the best things for homes where someone uses a wheelchair.
• There should be 700 mm of knee room under the sink.
• Both sides of the work center should have pull-out vertical units.
• There must be more than one way to get into the kitchen, and each of these ways must have a multi-pole light switch so that a disabled person can turn on and off the kitchen lights from any of these ways.
• If you have an electric cooktop with burners in different places and controls on the front, you won’t have to reach across hot burners.
• Touchpads are great for people who don’t have strong fingers or much control over them.

Accessibility to Bathroom:

• The basin should be low and have enough knee and floor space for people in wheelchairs.
• Shower cubicles should have wide, high seats that make it easy for wheelchair users to get in and out, as well as grab rails that make it easy to hold on to.
• In an emergency, call buttons or other signaling devices like phones or alert systems must be placed where they are easy to reach.
• The best kind of shower door is one that slides. In case of an emergency, locks or latches should be able to be opened from the outside.
• The WC should have support bars that fold up so that someone in a wheelchair can move to the side.
• One of the most important things to do in the shower to prevent falls is to make sure the floor doesn’t slip. Over a concrete floor, a textured tile or a slatted wood tray can make the floor stronger.
• People who have trouble getting to light switches can use lights with motion detectors.

Accessibility to Living or dining room:

• There should be a lot of ways to get into and out of the living room.
• The electrical outlets need to be lower, but they can’t be more than 15 inches from the floor.
• There should be 1.5 m of space around each piece of furniture so that wheelchairs can easily move around them.
• It’s best to have a room that is both a living room and a dining room. Knee height at the table should be 750 mm.

Accessibility to Bedroom:

• The bed shouldn’t be put where two walls meet in a corner. Instead, there should be at least 900 mm of space for the person in a wheelchair to move onto the bed on their own or with the help of a helper.
• A wheelchair docking station next to the bed can help keep the chair stable while the user moves from the wheelchair to the bed.
• Ceiling lifts that slide along a horizontal track should be put in the room, starting at the door and going all the way to the bed.
• With D-ring pull handles and light drawers, closets, and drawers must be made to the needs of disabled people in mi

Every kind of disability comes with its own problems and needs to make life easier. Needs and answers for one can’t be used to solve problems for the other. So, before you buy a home, you should always think about the needs of disabled family members and use the best design features to meet those needs. Here are some features of design for certain disabilities:

Wheelchair users:

• The design of the living space is based on the size of the wheelchair. Some parts of this design are:
• Entrances and exits should have a width of at least 900 mm.
• For easy movement, there should be at least 1.5 m of floor space around each piece of furniture.
• At the entrances, the climbing ramp should have a slope of 1:12, which means that for every 20 inches of length, there should be a rise of 1 inch.
• There needs to be enough room to move the person from the wheelchair to the toilet seat or bed.
• Range of reach should be thought about carefully.

People who can’t see well:

• People with poor vision can use guiding blocks to help them find their way inside and outside the building.
• In the apartment building or housing complex, there should be both braille and audible signs with information.
• Contrasting colour schemes for people who can’t see well.
• Nothing should stick out of the walls or floors.
• There should be enough room to walk.

People with trouble hearing:

• The apartment complex should have lit signs and maps of how to get around.
• Hallways that are six feet wide so that hearing-impaired people can use sign language while they walk.
• Due to good eyesight, strobe lighting should not be used.
• Many of the design ideas are based on reducing eye strain as much as possible.

Disclaimer: The opinions shown above are mainly for informational reasons and are based on market research. Deal Acres is not responsible for any actions made as a result of relying on the provided material and makes no representations as to its accuracy, completeness, or reliability.