Whether you’re dealing with recent trauma or just want to prepare your home for when you get older, making your home more handicap accessible is a great idea. In fact, it can improve the value of your home to have it more accessible to the handicap. Here are five simple ways that you can convert your existing home to be more handicap accessible.
Widen Doorways
When you think about maneuvering a wheelchair through your home, you’ll need to consider how it’s going to fit through doors. You’ll have to widen all the doorways in your home, not just your front door. The standard wheelchair is 25 inches wide. Giving extra space to fit the wheelchair comfortably through the door requires about 35 inches of open space for each door in your home. The standard wheelchair is 25 inches wide, but to comfortably maneuver through the space, your doorways should be about 35 inches wide.
Get Rid of Carpet
Carpeting can make it very difficult to maneuver throughout a home. Do yourself a favor and get rid of the carpeting. Instead, replace it with flat flooring material. Hardwood, vinyl, laminate, and tiling tend to be the best options. They all create a flat floor that is easy to push wheels right across. Make sure that any rugs you have are well secured so they aren’t folding back and getting in the way.
Create Ramps
Thinking about how to access your home in a wheelchair can bring up some tricky situations depending on how your existing entryway is setup. Existing doorsteps can be altered using concrete lifting to a more ramp style entryway. Add railings alongside the ramp to make access even easier for those in a wheelchair.
Change Doorknobs
Traditional doorknobs can be difficult to manage from a wheelchair. They an inconvenient shape that can be difficult to grasp and turn, especially for those with arthritis or limited mobility. You can fix this simple obstruction by replacing all the doorknobs in your home with lever handles. Lever handles are easy to grab ahold of and require less movement to get the door opened.
Lower Switches
Most switches are installed about four feet off of the ground. When you’re in a wheelchair, this can require a stretch just to reach. To make your home more wheelchair friendly, you can make a simple adjustment of lowering all the light switches throughout your home to a more convenient height.
As you can see, there are many changes you can make to your home. Even the slightest alteration of the height of a light switch can make life so much more comfortable for those in a wheelchair. The more you put yourself in the position of being in a wheelchair, the more changes you’ll be able to come up with.
