Disability Awareness Day: Home Improvements For People With Special Needs

Living with a disability is hard, especially when the environment is not adapted to your needs. There are a lot of people who have hearing, visual or physical impairment, which make their lives more difficult, especially in a home which is not modified for their needs. In the spirit of Disability Awareness Day in UK, our Bolton team would like to help you with a few home improvement ideas. We’ve divided home improvement in three types of impairment.

1. How To Adapt Your Home For Visually-Impaired People

It can be a challenge to improve you home to the needs of a person with such problems, so we’ve got a few ideas to help you with the task.

• Get Rid Of Tripping Hazards

If you have to adapt your home for a visually-impaired family member first, get rid of all tripping hazards. It doesn’t matter if your relative is partially or fully blind, there’s always a possibility for them to trip and injure themselves. Make sure the flooring boards or carpets are not loose. Staircases are important as well. You’d have to make sure staircases have handrails, so they can be used with ease.

• Create A Colour Scheme

Get rid or move items which take up a lot of space and don’t give freedom of movement. If a member of your family is partially visually-impaired, make a colour scheme. Though they don’t have a perfect vision, they still recognise different tones. The scheme will define different spots and items around your household.

2. Property Adjustments For People With Hearing Disabilities

Those home enhancements will help a hearing-disabled person with their everyday life, give them confidence and comfort. This task involves installing different items which give out visual signals.

• The Smart Lighting

One great example for home improvements of the sort are smart LG light bulb which could prove a useful solution for people suffering from hearing loss. They can connect to Android and iOS devices. When synced, you can fully control them with your smartphone, for example. Turning the lights off remotely, set them flicker when the phone rings are just part of the functions it offers.

• A Genius Doorbell

Install a smart doorbell, which makes lights flicker as well. Thus your hearing-impaired family member will know when somebody is at the door. Other models, as Action On Hearing Loss offers, give out bright light signals or are portable, so you can take them around your property or in the backyard.

• Fire Alarms Suitable For People With Hearing Loss

But what about fire safety? There are different types smoke alarm devices, which warn a hearing-disabled people about fire or CO in their home. Most of them are easy to install and don’t require major wiring fixes and adaptation.

3. Home Adjustment For Physically-Disabled People

Here’s a list of the most common improvement you can make for people with physical disabilities.

• Widen Doors And Modify Thresholds

Ordinary doors have higher thresholds, which will make it difficult for a disabled person to enter their home or rooms in it. Make sure the doors are wide enough for them to pass through freely.

• Provide More Space, So They Can Use Every Room

Provide more space for movement around the rooms in your home. People in wheelchairs need a lot of room to carry out their everyday tasks. This means clearing paths of home accessories. Extra plushy rugs and carpets will be a problem, as they might hinder their moving around the rooms.

• Lower Home Appliances Levels

Keep in mind a person in a wheelchair won’t be able to work with household appliances which are situated higher than their reach.

• Barrier-Free Bathrooms

Bathrooms must be modified as well. Except widening the bathroom as well, you should consider getting rid of all barriers which might be in the way. Adding linear instead of ordinary circular drains will decrease one of the chair’s wheels to get stuck in the drain. There are specially-designed seats which are mounted right under the showers. They allow people with physical disability, use the shower area easier.

• Lower The Switches And Outlets

You should place power outlets and switches sat approximately 15 inches above the floor. Thus they will be easily reachable. Thus you’ll provide independence to the people to handicapped people in their own home.