Custom Home For People Living With Physical Disabilities

Why Home Accessibility is Important:

At a basic level, building accessible homes is both respectful and fair to those living with physical disabilities, providing them with the ability to independently live in a home. Fairness, however, is only secondary to safety. Failing to ensure safe access to homes, makes it impossible for those living with disabilities to access them in a safe manner. 

Types of Physical disabilities: 

Physical limitations – this is what most people think of when they hear “physical disability”. This includes mobility problems, limited motor function and speech difficulties, etc. 

Sensory Limitations: This category follows any disability that affects the senses. This includes difficulty hearing, deafness, poor eyesight and blindness, etc. 

Neurological Limitations: These disabilities pertain to issues affecting the nervous system. This includes migraines, epilepsy, seizures, Tourette’s syndrome, etc. 

Here Are 4 Ways To Improve Accessibility In Your Home:

Wheelchair Ramps:  The first step for making your home accessible is by making it easy for people with physical limitations to enter. For people in wheelchairs or with prosthetics, climbing stairs may be nearly impossible. Adding a ramp to your front door will allow people with physical limitations easy entry to the house. 

Walk-in Bathtubs and Curb-less Showers: Hygiene is extremely important, and having bathroom accessibility is key to providing those with physical disabilities self-reliance when it comes to the practice. Having the bathroom fitted with a walk-in bathtub or curb-less shower is a great way of doing this. If your home does not have these features, bathing may become a huge issue for people with physical limitations. As a final thought, make sure the shower has a bench for sitting on and an easily reachable head. 

Stairlift: We have already discussed how to overcome stairs outside the house, but what about the interior? One of the best ways of doing this is by integrating a stairlift into your home. Currently, this technology is popular with the senior population, but is a definite boon to accessibility for all physical limitations. A stairlift is an easy way to help navigate inclines/declines in your home. 

Open Floor Plans: If building a custom home, it’s important to consider the floor plan. Many modern homes are built with a more open style, which is great for accessibility. Having a wide, open floor plan will make it much easier for wheelchair access, having fewer obstacles to move around. Having wider hallways and stairwells will allow for easy implementation of stairlifts and railings to improve the balance of those who need it. 

Thank you for reading!

To learn more visit: https://blog.remax.ca/the-impact-of-homes-built-for-those-with-physical-disabilities/