Barrier Free Architecturals
August 29, 2010

Alzheimer’s and Barrier Free Dwelling

We’ve got good news for those millions of people (roughly 5.3 million) suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.  A recent article at Networx provides insight into a number of home modifications that make living with Alzheimer’s more manageable.

Depth-perception is something most of us take for granted, but much of our daily actions involve this function; a function that people with Alzheimer’s notably lack.  This lack makes many commonplace activities a serious challenge for those with Alzheimer’s disease.  According to Rosemary Bakker, MS, a Research Associate in Gerontologic Design in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, being devoid of depth-perception is problematic for those with Alzheimer’s in that they “may not notice a glass door and try to walk right through it.  If there’s a low cocktail table, particularly if it’s glass, they may not even see it and walk right into it.  Climbing stairs can be a really big issue because if the riser and the tread are the same color, the person may not know how high to lift one’s feet, and therefore falls can occur and can be terrifying to try to walk the stairs.”  Fortunately, home-changes can be made to help.

Where people with Alzheimer’s cannot distinguish between obstacles on the basis of different depths, Bakker recommends highlighting the change in platform in other ways.  For example, contrasting colors can be used for the tread and riser of your stairs.  This simple modification not only makes stair-climbing safe again for everyone, this previously boring event becomes pleasantly colorful.

In addition to helpful color contrasting schemes, proper lighting arrangements can make living with Alzheimer’s less difficult.  Since glare and sharp changes in light levels are big problems for those living with Alzheimer’s, a home sensitive to these conditions will be furnished with consistent lighting levels and matte-finished furniture (especially large tables, which tend to be shiny).  Bakker indentifies polished floors as particularly troublesome: first its shininess disorients those with Alzheimer’s, and coupled with its slipperiness, the polished floor poses a double-threat.

Another important, and relatively easy home modification concerns bathrooms. Bakker said, “Bathing is really a big issue.  If you’re planning on renovating your house, or you’re planning on renovating a bathroom, why don’t you think about taking out a nearby closet and getting two or three feet of space from the adjacent room and put in a walk-in, wheel-in shower.  It will make a huge difference later on, and it’s also helpful for everyone.”

At Barrier Free, we’ve made possible numerous bathroom accessibility projects, and in addition to walk-in bathtubs, we’ve noticed that the presence of shower seats is central to the accessible bathroom.  While Bakker importantly points out the helpfulness of handrails for those with Alzheimer’s, we would add that the installation grab bars is perhaps the simplest high-benefit addition one can make to their home.  Of particular benefit to people with Alzheimer’s our Design Line Grab Bars come in a variety of vibrant colors, allowing for bold contrast against every wall in your (increasingly) accessible home.

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August 27, 2010

Getting Clear on Universal Design

We touched on the subject of ‘universal design’ in our recent post on Barrier-Free Living in Ontario, and thought it might be interesting to go into the principal with greater depth. So, what exactly is ‘universal design’?

To use the definition provided by The Institute for Human Centred Design, universal, or inclusive, design can be defined as “the design of products, environments, and communication to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without adaptation or specialized design”. This simple definition houses a simple, yet incredibly important idea. The adoption of universal design signifies more than an acceptance of equality across all members of society; it recognises the importance of equitable living, without the need for distinction or paternalism.

Two key factors contributed to the growth in popularity of universal design. Firstly, more and more people are living with a greater range of disabilities. Secondly, we are living in an ageing population, and it’s not getting any younger! Making accessible design the norm rather than the exception makes a lot of sense given these two facts.

The Institute of Human Centred Design lists the seven principals of universal design as the following:

  1. Equitable Use – the design does not single out a group or groups of individuals in any particular way.
  2. Flexibility in Use – lots of different people can use the design in lots of different ways, according to their needs and wants.
  3. Simple, Intuitive Use – the design shouldn’t take any expertise or particular skills to use to optimum performance.
  4. Perceptible Information – the lines of communication between the design and the user are as clear as possible,
  • Tolerance For Error – if something goes wrong, the design will not break easily or become dangerous to use.
  1. Low Physical Effort – the design can be used by anyone, despite their current energy or strength levels.
  2. Size and Space for Approach & Use – the design is accessible and usable for anyone, regardless of their size, posture or mobility.

Although the phrase ‘universal design’ has been around for about 50 years, it has only become mainstream recently, so do look out for it! We promote these principals in our company through, for example, in our holistic handicap shower designs.

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Celebrating the ADA’s Positive Impact

This year is the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), so it’s a perfect opportunity to either learn about or remember where the legislation first came from, and what it has achieved over the twenty years of its existence. Accessibility is integral across all levels of our society, but it wasn’t always so…

The disability rights movement was around long before the ADA came into being in 1990; the act’s very existence is due to the thousands of people involved in protests, lobbying, administration, recruitment and awareness raising that took place for years before any legally enforced changes took place. In terms of legal advances, the most significant precursor to the ADA was probably Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, which made it illegal to discriminate on grounds of disability.

The first version of the ADA was introduced in 1988, and went through many rounds of changes and redrafts over the next two years. During those two years, those involved in the disability rights movement orchestrated a massive publicity campaign to raise awareness of the high levels of discrimination and to persuade the general public that these discriminations represented injustice on a massive scale. One of the ways this was achieved was by publicising some of the thousands of first-hand accounts of discrimination submitted by individuals around the country.

So what did the ADA actually achieve? Arlene Mayerson wrote an excellent history of the Act in 1992, and has this to say on the question: “The ADA is based on a basic presumption that people with disabilities want to work and are capable of working, want to be members of their communities and are capable of being members of their communities and that exclusion and segregation cannot be tolerated.”

Presently, the ADA affects every facet of life in the US. Perhaps most significantly, in the marketplace, anything with the ADA compliance stamp can be bought in the highest confidence.  This includes a lot of the products offered through our store; for example, our entire range of accessible shower chairs, products by virtue of which we join in celebrating two decades of the ADA and its positive impact on civil rights.

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August 25, 2010

Lemon Laws Provide Protection in Sour Times

Here is an interesting item of news straight from Disabled World that involves the well known Lemon Law in the United States.  Lemon Laws are so named because of the sour pucker one gets from biting into a lemon (the fruit) or meeting a ‘lemon’ (a jerky person), the embodied equivalent  to the jolting  taste left in your mouth; one that follows from being on the receiving end of a bitter deal.

The Lemon Law is designed to protect the public from unscrupulous dealers and /or plain bad luck, and covers motorized vehicles that undergo problem after problem, or suffer continuous repetition of the same problem. Actual Lemon Laws can vary from state to state, but the basic premise remains constant: if a person purchases a car, truck, SUV, RV, or other motorized vehicle that proves to be a dud, it can be exchanged or perhaps returned for full refund. Yay!

If the Lemon Law was not practical and positive enough, according to an article in Disabled World entitled Lemon Laws for Motor Vehicles and Disability Products, US lemon laws can also cover motorized wheelchairs, scooters and other motorized equipment designed to serve the disabled. So if you have recently purchased a motorised vehicle or device and believe you may have a ‘lemonesque’ piece of machinery on your hands, it may be a good (and refreshing) idea to check the parameters of the Lemon Laws in your state. Depending on where you live, you will likely find you have some form of protection. This may be true even if you have purchased used disability equipment.

At Barrier Free, we consider the quality of our accessibility and handicap equipment to be of utmost importance. Whether you are purchasing a swing door opener, roll in shower, or even any one of our clearance items, you can take comfort in the fact that you can safely and conveniently operate our equipment, every time.

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August 20, 2010

Ontario Committed to Barrie-Free Living

The Canadian government takes barrier free living very seriously. The Ontarians with Disabilities Act (ODA), established in 2001, seeks to improve opportunities for people with disabilities, chiefly by getting them involved in the identification, removal and/or prevention of barriers. This creates circumstances where they can participate in everyday activities to the fullest degree. This Act applies to the following areas of public living: Customer service, Transportation, Information and communications, Built environment and Employment.

What’s really interesting is how this Act conceives of ‘barriers’. All too often, a ‘barrier’ is simply seen as some kind of physical impediment that prevents the movement or positioning of a person with disabilities. In contrast, the ODA refers to all of the following when it talks about barriers:

- physical barriers – such as inaccessible stairs or doors without a swing door operator or public showers that do not include ada showers;

- communication barriers – for example, a publication that is not available in large print;

- attitudinal barriers – an attitude held by anyone in the municipality that withholds the possibility of an ‘all access’ lifestyle for people with disabilities;

- technological barriers – a situation where a technological system isn’t compatible with an accessible experience for people with disabilities, for example, an office desk that doesn’t allow a person in a wheelchair access;

- policy or practices – a situation where policy makes it difficult for people with disabilities to complete the task or requirement; for example, long queues to renew a passport.

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing posits the solution of ‘Universal Design’ to combat all the potential or existent barriers described above, positioning it as “an evolution from accessible or barrier-free design to one that is even more inclusive”.

A sizable chunk of Ontario’s population is made up of people with disabilities and this number is obviously set to increase as the population ages. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for any new builds to take this vision of ‘Universal Design’ into account right from the start, therefore avoiding the costly process of retrofitting or even, in extreme cases, having to completely rebuild inaccessible places.

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North Americans Fear Disability

A recent survey called the “Eye on Eyesight” found that Americans fear blindness more than heart disease, even though the latter is the biggest single killer of both men and women in the United States. This news was covered in Earth Times.

Choice Magazine Listening commissioned the survey, which was conducted by Surge Research Incorporated. Choice Magazine Listening is a non-profit organisation that records and distributes audio recordings of reading materials (including anything from magazine articles to poetry) to anyone who struggles to read because of disability.

The results of the survey are particularly surprising when you learn that the group questioned were those with the highest risk of serious heart disease (men and women between the ages of 50 and 64), and that they were nearly twice as scared of blindness than of heart disease!

Furthermore, the survey found that 79% of Americans consider losing one’s sight to be the “worst thing that could happen to me,” other than their own death or the death of a loved one.

Whence cometh this fear? Although the Americans that took this survey answered that death is their greatest fear, why are they more afraid of a non-fatal disability than of a sudden, often fatal, attack of the heart? As Sondra Mochson, Editor-in-Chief of Choice Magazine Listening, puts it: “Many of us take our vision for granted. The thought of losing abilities that are basic to us, including important day-to-day functions like reading, creates tremendous fear.”

All this goes to confirm the importance of the implementation of accessible design for the American lifestyle; if visual impairment came to be less of an issue in day-to-day life, perhaps it would become less feared. This means building barrier free living into the infrastructure across public and private living, making accessible kitchens, handicap showers and accessible offices the status quo, rather than the exception. The knock on effect of reducing the fear around something like blindness might even go as far as to increase awareness of heart disease and the steps that can be taken by individuals to lower their risk levels.

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August 15, 2010

Disability Hate Crimes

The Australian Broadcasting Association recently reported on some new research that reveals thousands of Australians with disabilities are suffering at the hands of increasingly potent hate crimes. Unfortunately, because the legislation in Australia is unclear, these crimes are often passed off as straightforward Abuse crimes, which result in much smaller charges.

Dr Sherry, a local expert on the problem, says that a lack of awareness is the biggest problem; for example, the Australian statutory appointee who is meant to oversee the affairs of adults with disabilities claims not to have heard of any hate crimes, despite multiple examples that suggest otherwise. Dr Sherry argues that the only way to deal with this problem is to include physical disability into hate crime legislation, as is done in the US, Canada, and many other countries around the world.

The Canadian Criminal Code states that sentences should be increased according to whether the crime was motivated by “hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or any other similar factor”. Source. This clarity makes appropriate charges very accessible to law enforcers in this country.

Disability hate crime has been in the international news a lot over the last few months. For example, in June, the UK changed its legislation in order to increase the sentences associated with disability hate crime following some high profile cases.

On June 16th, Statistics Canada reported the numbers of hate crimes committed in 2008, showing a really alarming increase of 35% between 2007 and 2008. However, very few of these hate crimes are targeted towards Canadians with disabilities (racial and religious crime is much more common).

Making such statistics accessible to the general public is a really important step in raising awareness about just how prevalent hate crime is, and what steps can be taken to reduce it. One of the best things you can do to raise awareness specifically about disability hate crime is to make sure you cater for all levels of disability in your home and work environment, whether that means providing ramps, handicap showers and bathrooms, better lighting or greater wheelchair access to your yard.

Filed under Mobility Issues and News
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August 14, 2010

Shower Seats and Their Importance

Shower seats are basically sitting devices designed for one primary purpose: to provide people a place to sit on while taking a shower. Many individuals may not actually believe that they need to have these fixtures in their bathrooms and you may probably think so, too. After all, most people are used to standing in their bathrooms while taking a quick shower. So, why should there be a need for you to accessorize with a shower seat?

Definitely, a bathroom or a shower room can do without a shower seat. However, if people will consider the safety of their bathrooms, they may realize that having one of these accessories is indeed important. The floor tiles of bathrooms are often slippery and accidents can happen. Shower seats, such as chairs, stools and benches can provide safety to people while taking a shower. These accessories can help them avoid accidental slips and falls. With a shower seat, one can sit down and enjoy taking a shower without ever having to worry about the slippery, wet floor.

Shower seats are especially beneficial to people with disabilities or those suffering from injuries.  These shower accessories are also great for families with little children and baby boomers.  With these fixtures in the shower room, children, elders, injured persons, and persons with disability do not need to spend shower time standing up. They can take a shower themselves without needing much help from their family members.

There are several different styles of shower seats. There are the shower chairs, shower stools, and shower benches. Some of these may be integrated into the bathroom as a permanent fixture right under the shower and some may be designed as retractable devices attached to walls. Some may also be portable and can be placed and taken out from one place any time when needed. All of these designs may provide people the same convenience of a shower seat but when purchasing a shower chair, you may want to make sure that it is ADA compliant or ADA approved. This will ensure that the seat is indeed safe for use in the bathroom especially by persons with disability, children, elders, and those with injuries.

Filed under bathroom safety tips and products
August 13, 2010

Accessible Offices

Accessible Offices

A well designed office is an accessible office. With floorspace going at a premium, it can be tempting for companies to sacrifice a well thought out office plan for more desk or equipment space. However, as the British Council for Offices: “Meeting the needs of employees with disabilities helps create better designed, easier-to-use workplaces for everyone – not just those with sight loss or reduced mobility.” Moreover, placing space over accessibility isn’t a necessary sacrifice; there are plenty of ways to maximize the capacity of an office without giving up its accessibility.

Office Layout Design

Designing the layout of your office is the best place to start when considering how to maintain or improve the accessibility of your workplace. This means either using a guide (like the one linked to above from the British Council for Offices), or consulting an expert. Once you start to think creatively about how to fit everything into your office without loosing the features needed to make it accessible to everyone, you’ll be amazed at how much more of an intuitive space it becomes.

For example, if you were to invest in adjustable desks, each workspace could be bespoke to the user, allowing them to use as much or as little space as they need. These desks also help to improve the management of office equipment (for example, cables and modems), using innovative storage solutions.

Of course, it’s also important to ensure that other facilities at your office are as accessible as possible to people with different disabilities. This includes, for example, the bathroom and kitchen. As with office design, one of the best ways to get this part of your businesses’ office right is to think in terms of adjustability, which ultimately makes everyone’s life easier. For example, a kitchen area that provides plenty of reachable storage space and enough floorspace to move around in, will allow employees to prepare proper meals at work, rather than settling for something more expensive and less nutritious.

Your employees spend a lot of time in your office, so it’s absolutely vital that their existence there is comfortable, enjoyable and, above all, accessible.

Filed under Mobility Issues and News
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August 6, 2010

Accessible Cities USA

A recent report by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation has ranked some of America’s largest cities based on their accessibility and livability for wheelchair users. The report was commissioned to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and 100 cities were ranked using a list of criteria to determine the degree of flourishing that people in wheelchairs could achieve there.

While the top 20 covers several regions across the country, climate was one of the first criteria used to narrow down the list. Any cities that had extremes in temperature or a lot of snowfall were avoided, as the goal was to find those cities with the most hospitable climates for wheelchair users. So, while some cities may have ranked higher with regard to the other criteria used, climate played a major role in knocking them out of contention.

The cities that remained were ranked on things like air quality, types and availability of accessible housing, supply of doctors, rehabilitation centers and therapists, accessible fitness and recreation centers, and public para-transit systems. The number of physically disabled people already living in the city was looked at, as well as whether they were employed.

The age of the city was taken into consideration, as older cities will have older buildings. These buildings are sometimes a challenge to make accessible, so there may be more buildings that are still inaccessible for all members of the population. The final factor used in the ranking was the amount of funding for, and availability of, Medicare, including the eligibility requirements  for attaining some kind of health care.

The report by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation indicates that, while the top 20 cities are highest on the list, it doesn’t mean that they are completely accessible. The goal of the list was to highlight those cities that are the best accessible and also those on the right track to providing livable environments for wheelchair users.

Here are the top cities as ranked by the Foundation:

  1. Seattle, WA
  2. Albuquerque, NM
  3. Reno, NE
  4. Denver, CO
  5. Portland, OR
  6. Chicago, IL
  7. Birmingham, AL
  8. Winston-Salem, NC
  9. Orlando, FL
  10. Lubbock, TX
  11. Miami, FL
  12. Tampa, FL
  13. Durham, NC
  14. Fort Worth, TX
  15. Virginia Beach, VA
  16. Arlington, TX
  17. Baltimore, MD
  18. New Orleans, LA
  19. Arlington, VA
  20. Atlanta, GA

Don’t fret if your city isn’t on the list.  If your greater environment is still on its way to becoming more accessible, you can take steps towards making your local environment more liveable first.  This can be done by installing wheelchair ramps and putting in place automatic door openers to ensure barrier-free movement in your more immediate surroundings.

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