You can make your home accessible and disabled friendly. Here are some tips.

Imagine living in your own home where everything is inaccessible? So if you have a disabled person at home, it is extremely important to make your home accessible and disabled friendly. Nowadays, there are experts who can help you plan out your home to make it disabled friendly. With a little bit of consideration and care, you can build a beautiful home which can accommodate your disabled family member.

I have made my home fully accessible and disabled friendly. So the moment I step in to my house everything is available at my fingertip and is accessible. I get out from my car using my wheelchair and I can enter my home without any hassles. There are no steps in my house. That makes mobility easier. There is a lot of space between the doorways so that I can move around freely- Abdul Nasser, wheelchair user from Kerala

Here are some tips to make your home disabled friendly and accessible

• Wheelchair ramps are important- This goes without a say. Ramps are inevitable for wheelchair users. The reason that most of them refuse to even go out is because there are no wheelchair ramps at most of the public spaces. So at home, make sure that you install a ramp. It is not too expensive to build a wheelchair ramp. Try and keep one at the entrance of the house and other places where the wheelchair user accesses.
• Make kitchens accessible- Kitchens are one of the most important places in a home. Make sure that everything is accessible for your disabled family member. For example, keep all the spice powders in the same place so that a blind person can access it when they want to. Similarly, everything can be kept at handy distances where wheelchair users can easily access them. You must also let them know where you have kept everything. In case they are hungry and wants to grab a bite, everything must be available at their fingertip.
• Furniture must be accessible- We tend to keep changing positions of our furniture at home. That is because we might get bored of seeing the same thing everyday which becomes monotonous. But for people with disabilities, keeping everything intact inside their homes is important. For example, a blind person will find it extremely difficult if you keep changing furniture. Chances are high that they might trip and even fall down stepping on something new. When you have a wheelchair user at home, place furniture and give a lot of gaps so that they can move around freely. Make a path of at least 32 inches for easy movement. Sometimes, you might even have to raise the furniture so that a wheelchair user can sit comfortably.
• Widen doorways- It is extremely important that you widen the spaces between doorways. For a wheelchair user, this will help them move around freely across the house. Changing doorways will not cost you a fortune anyways. So try and widen them so that your disabled family member can be comfortable inside their own home.

“My home was built much before I was born. So my family have not really changed anything. But they give me detailed descriptions of where things are kept. In case they are moving something, I’am made aware of it. They make sure that I can easily move around and everything is adjusted accordingly”, says Shailesh Kulal who is visually impaired.

Watch in Sign Language