If you asked them, most people over 75 would tell you they’d rather spend their final years at home instead of in an assisted living facility or retirement community. Continue reading "Aging in Place Design Ideas Checklist"
Category Archives: Accessibility
Accessibility and Enjoying the Great Outdoors
Spring is here, bringing with it plenty of opportunities to get out and enjoy your backyard. But for people with mobility issues, this can be easier said than done.
That’s why we want to spend some time today talking about ways to make your backyard – from decks to patios to walkways – more accessible.
In some cases that means installing devices such as stair lifts and platform lifts. Other times, accessibility means making certain adjustments.
Here are a few ways to make your backyard for accessible this spring:
1. Spaces and paths
Everyone wants a smooth, level place to sit during backyard gatherings, and people who use wheelchairs are no exception. Wheelchairs need about five feet of space in which to turn around. Ideally, you should aim for more than that, with spaces scattered around the area.
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6 Handicap Accessibility Tips for Your Home
Most stores, restaurants, and government buildings take steps to accommodate people with disabilities. It’s the right thing to do, but it’s also the law.
But things aren’t always as easy at home. Most homes aren’t designed with wheelchair users in mind. However, with a few modifications, it’s possible for people with disabilities to live comfortably. Here are a few handicap accessibility tips for your home:
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Installing a Stair Lift on Curved Staircases
Stair lift installation
is easy when staircases are easy. A staircase that goes straight from point A to point B requires far less work than a curved staircase.
That doesn’t mean curved stair lifts are impossible. While they present a challenge, they can be done.
Curved stairways – or staircases that have any sort of irregular design – are more expensive to work with. That’s because no two curved staircases are the same, which means you’ll need a custom stair lift.
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Making Your Home Accessible for the Holidays
There’s a lot of work that goes into getting your home ready for holiday guests: cooking, cleaning, adding fresh sheets to the guest room.
But when one of your guests has a disability, your job is to make your home not just hospitable, but accessible. If this is new territory for you, don’t worry. We’ve put together a few tips to help guests who have disabilities feel more at home.
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Best Accessibility Options for Your Home
Here’s a phrase that we should leave in the past: “Confined to a wheelchair.”
Having to use a wheelchair doesn’t mean you’re trapped, especially not at home. From stair lifts to ramps, there are options available to you or your loved ones to make your home more accessible:
1. Wheelchair ramps
Ramps are the most common way of making a home, business or public building more accessible to people who use wheelchairs, scooters, or simply have difficulty getting up and down stairs. A contractor can install a permanent ramp made of concrete or wood, but a folding or modular ramp can also work if you’re on a tighter budget.
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Making Your Home Wheelchair Accessible
Thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act, most public places are designed with people who use wheelchairs in mind: ramps or ground-level entry ways, handicap parking, automatic doors.
But when it comes to your home, it’s a different story. Chances are your house wasn’t designed with wheelchair use in mind. And that can be a problem if you or a loved one finds themselves needing a wheelchair to get around.
At Pennsylvania Stair Lifts, this is the type of thing we think about all the time. Making homes more wheelchair-friendly is our business. That’s why we’ve put together these tips for making your home wheelchair accessible.
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Mobility Tips for Aging in Place
For a growing number of aging Americans who are no longer quite as capable as they once were of getting around without assistance, or of completing everyday activities without help, the idea of moving into a senior care facility simply doesn’t sound appealing.
Instead, they would rather remain in the homes in which they’ve spent their adult lives. Homes that are familiar, and where they feel comfortable and safe. Homes, in many instances, with mortgages that have long ago been paid off.
So many older Americans, in fact, have begun choosing to remain in their homes regardless of their ability to adequately look after themselves that a phrase has been coined for the trend. It’s known as “aging in place.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), aging in place is nothing more than “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level.”
A senior who chooses to age in place, in other words, is a person who hasn’t yet given up on life. This is a person, you might say, who is confident that he or she can overcome any obstacles that may appear during the quest to continue living a happily fulfilled and well-rounded life.
If that sounds like you, or like someone you love, we have good news: There are any number of simple and affordable home modifications that can make any house a safer and more welcoming place for people with mobility issues, vision problems, or nearly any other impediment that tends to be common in old age.
Here are just a few ideas for transforming a non-accessible home into a place where you or your aging relatives can age in place without constant fear of injury.
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Baby Boomers Take a Proactive Approach to Aging
In 2011, the AARP did a survey of older homeowners and found most of them preferred to “age in place” instead of moving into a nursing home or other form of senior housing.
“The overwhelming majority of people want to stay in their homes,” age-in-place consultant Alissa Boroff told The Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2014. “But the way we’re building homes, we’re not supporting their needs. There’s not enough universal design so people can age gracefully.”
Universal design refers to the concept of building homes so that they work for people at every stage of their lives. When that’s not the case, many homeowners wind up taking a proactive approach to aging and redesigning their homes to fit their eventual needs.
The Star-Tribune profiled a few couples who had remodeled their homes to make them more accessible. One added a bathroom with a walk-in shower and wheelchair accessible sink, while another added a bedroom and bathroom to their first floor.
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Our Guide to Wheelchair Accessible Amusement Parks
It’s tough to say exactly how many wheelchair users there are in the United States. Some statistics claim there are nearly 3 million regular users of wheelchairs in the country, while a recent report published by the Disability Statistics Center of the University of California suggests the number is closer to 1.7 million. But no matter how you slice it, one thing’s for sure: That’s a whole lot of people.
If you spend the majority of your day—or your entire day—in a wheelchair, you know full well just how frustrating it can be to get from point A to point B. According to the aforementioned University of California report, for instance, “four-fifths of wheelchair users report that their local public transportation system is difficult to use or to get to.” And “two-thirds of mobility device users have limitations in one or more of the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL).” So the fact that most leisure activities aren’t designed to be easy for people with disabilities shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to any of us.
However, there is a good news for wheelchair-bound leisure seekers, both here in the United States and abroad. As accessibility issues are becoming more and more mainstream—and in some circles, more expected—theme parks, amusement parks, and other vacation spots that have traditionally been off-limits to those in wheelchairs are beginning to change their ways.
If you’re looking for a bit of traditional theme park fun but aren’t able to leave your chair, the following guide is a good place to start searching for opportunities.
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