Do you live with an individual who has mobility issues? Does your aging parent reside in your home? If so, you’re likely no stranger to making modifications to your living space. Naturally, it’s important to create a safe environment for all of your loved ones to live within. But that’s not always so easy. Is your home completely safe for everyone in it? What changes can be made to ensure that it’s more accessible to the family members who have mobility issues?
Here are three ways to make your home more accessible:
1. Install a raised support toilet seat.
Avoiding slips and falls is a top way to safeguard your home. A person with balance issues can be kept a lot safer from slipping and falling if he/she doesn’t have to bend down too far. A raised support toilet seat makes it so that an individual can have a much easier time sitting down on and standing up from the toilet. Balance is kept and the risk of falling is minimized.
“A toilet riser can make it easier for those who have trouble bending over or standing up and sitting down,” affirms Rachel Brougham on FamilyHandyman.com, “Risers can be purchased at home improvement and many drug stores, and usually, cost less than $50.”
2. Replace your traditional light switches with larger ones.
Keeping your home well-lit is an excellent way to prevent accidents. After all, you usually won’t trip over something you can clearly see in your path. However, turning on the lights isn’t as easy a feat as you may assume. Swapping out those tiny traditional light switches for larger ones will make it easier for older adults to see how to turn on the lights. Larger light switches also require a lot less effort to turn the lights on and off.
“Traditional light switches are very small and can be hard for many people to use,” notes Ileana Paules-Bronet on CafeMom.com, “A great alternative is rocker switches, which require much less dexterity to use, since you can turn on/off lights using your knuckles, fist, elbow, etc.”
3. Widen your doorways.
This step is particularly important for homes that inhabit individuals who use such mobility solutions as wheelchairs and walkers. Obviously, it can be hard to manoeuvre those devices through traditional narrow doorways. Widening your doorways makes it so that the individual with mobility issues in your home can easily and safely enter and exit various rooms of the home.
“Many wheelchairs and walkers are too wide to easily manoeuvre through doorways,” writes Brougham “Widening doorways can be a costly job (up to $1,000 in some cases), but you can use some offset hinges to help swing the door clear of the opening to inexpensively add a couple inches of space.”
At LifeCare Mobility Solutions, we proudly offer a wide variety of home bathroom modifications to help you make your home more accessible. Among them are raised support toilet seats, oversized light switches and widened doorways. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 416-267-9800 or email us at info@lifecaremobility.ca. You may also contact us by filling out the form on our Contact page!
