Reduced Mobility Design and Wheelchair Access

If someone in your family is having a hard time moving around the house - lurching from one piece of furniture to another, trying to get a grip, stumbling over rugs, struggling to open doors or cross threshholds - I can help you redesign your home to make it accessible again. Friends need not know that you've remodeled to help you or a loved one to get around (and to get around the frustration of having a disability) because the changes can be beautiful and invisible to visitors. All they will see is that you have made your home more beautiful.

Given all you need to do just to deal with the illness itself, you may be wondering how you’re going to find the time and energy to reconfigure rooms, widen doors, install grab bars, replace curtains, and change furniture and floorings.

ADA Accessibility and Your Home

Although I have been trained to understand and apply the wheelchair and mobility standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), I find that they seldom contain the answers to home access problems. For one thing, the ADA standards have been written with new and commercial construction in mind. Most private homes, particularly older ones, simply don't have the space that would be required to follow ADA standards. (In fact, ADA standards don't apply to private homes.) For another, strict adherence to ADA would usually result in an interior that looks far too hospital-like for the comfort of most of us.

Answers from the School of Hard Knocks

When it comes to understanding how to manage a disability, there's no teacher that compares to experience. In 2007, my husband had spinal surgery. During his recovery, he had to navigate our home first with a walker, and then with a cane. His experience in struggling to cross threshholds, cross loose rugs and position himself to be able to park his walker in front of a chair was instructive. (Similarly eye-opening, but more frustrating were the two months I spent on crutches following a knee injury.) I have also had the advantage of being given a demonstration tour of kitchen accessibility by a colleague, Dr. Rhoda Olkin, who is a noted psychologist who works with disabilities, and who uses a wheelchair.

This background, plus my own creativity as a designer, enables me to solve your accessibility and mobility problems not just with professionalism and creativity, but also with a good measure of compassion.