At Blue Badge Style, we tend to spend a lot of our time focusing on the access at trendy restaurants, but we do realise that for most people a meal out is more of a treat rather than an everyday occurrence. Most of the time, most of us eat at home. For people with disabilities who want or need to cook for themselves it’s therefore important to make the kitchen as accessible as possible.
There are lots of ways to do this and to do it in a stylish, uncluttered way, without making your kitchen look like a doctor’s surgery. As with pretty much everything to do with access in the home there is no one way of doing things and it’s important to tailor modifications to the specific needs of the people who use the kitchen. Having said that, there are some overall guiding principles and tips that can be used as more general advice to make your kitchen easier for less physically able people to use.
Part of the difficulty with making the kitchen accessible is that you need to consider who it is that’s going to need to use the kitchen most. Flexibility is key to avoiding situations where you could ‘over-modify’ and create something that’s purpose built for disabled users but actually makes it harder for able bodied people to use. There aren’t too many problems that can arise and most adaptations benefit able bodied people too, but it’s good to keep things flexible. For instance, it’s great to have lowered surfaces for wheelchair users but if that means that they’re too low for other people, then that can also be a problem.
One solution for this is to design the kitchen with counters at differing heights. Having some taller counters and others lowered for a wheelchair user – wall mounted, with space to wheel under, of course – means that people of all shapes and sizes should be able to use the kitchen together in perfect harmony. Better still, you can get rise and fall work tops which can be lowered and raised as suitable for the user.
Speaking of things being lowered and raised, leading kitchen appliance specialist, Caple, have designed the Sense C5100 Lift, an oven designed to rise out of kitchen units. Unlike conventional ovens, it is fitted to lower into the kitchen work top and then, when you need to use it, it rises up from the counter at the touch of a button. It looks like a brilliant way of saving space and possibly would be helpful for accessing the oven too as it may involve less stretching to reach things and the oven door would not get in the way.
They don’t seem to be on sale in the UK quite yet but it’s an interesting idea for making it easier to take things out of the oven. For now it is at least possible to get other kitchen appliances which are easier to access. Compact drawer dishwashers that can be pulled out are much easier to load that regular dishwashers, which are deep and low down. Pull out trays which sit underneath the oven, allowing wheelchair users a space to put things down while they close the oven door, are also convenient extras.
It’s all about putting things that would be out of reach, into reach. Fitting pull out draw spaces rather that cupboards is good for this because they bring your items to you rather than having to try and dig around at the back of a cupboard. You can have large pull out cabinet spaces fitted, which make it easier to find and reach whatever you’re after. Click fix technology, where you just push the cupboards in slightly to release them, is much less effort than having to open a conventional draw. Alternatively, the experts say that large hooked handles are easier to get your hand around for people with limited dexterity.
German company Kesseböhmer have designed a variety of fantastic accessible storage options. Their roll out cabinets, magic corners and rolling shelves are all innovative and creative ways of maximising space and making it easier to reach items by bringing them to you. PWS are the UK distributors for Kesseböhmer and well worth taking a look at.
Bringing items at the back of cupboards nearer to you is an idea echoed in another dimension. It’s important to be able to reach the bottom of storage space, as well as the back of it, so it’s advisable to make sure kitchens have shallow drawers. This goes for sinks too since you need to be able to reach the washing up! This is all fairly commonsensical, but many companies, builders and even self decorators may overlook these details. You do hear of bizarre oversights, like wheelchair users being saddled with bins that open using a pedal!
In more sink related news: it’s better to have touch or lever taps, rather than stiff old fashioned tap handles which are hard to grasp. Sink disposal systems are also helpful for people who have trouble opening and loading bins. They’re also quite therapeutic to use – you just chuck leftovers in, press a conveniently placed button and watch the sink grind and gobble them up.
A final suggestion in the sink/water arena is an instant hot water dispenser. As well as being quicker that a kettle (the clue’s in the name), they’re less physical effort, which is handy for people with trouble lifting. The only issue is of how quickly they need to be loaded up. If you get one which is not directly connected to the water or able to store a lot of water itself, then it could end up still being a lot of effort to keep refilling the water supply.
It’s so important to find the right experts for any kitchen redecoration because it’s such a big endeavour, especially if you are looking to completely kit yourself out with new surfaces, drawers, sinks etc. Luckily this is an area where many companies are in a good position to provide accessible kitchen designs. However, as is often the case, the problem is not finding somewhere offering functional accessibility, but finding somewhere which marries this with a certain style and panache. With this in mind, there are a couple of places that we’d suggest:
Design Matters subgroup, Access Matters, has an extensive range of bespoke kitchen furniture designed by a disabled person for older and disabled people. They probably have the best combination of style and function that we’ve come across and they’re head designer is Adam Thomas, the UK’s leading designer of accessible kitchens and winner of the kitchen industry’s inaugural ‘Accessible Kitchen Design’ award.
AKW is another of the more style focused companies we’ve come across, their Liberty Kitchens are particularly good. They have years of experience in the field and look to give as much choice as possible within the process of adapting the kitchen. They have a good range of accessories and rise and fall kitchen work tops to choose from.
Ruby Slippers know that there’s no place like home and use their expertise to create perfect homes for less able and elderly people. They say they know how to make sure that the small but significant details are all in place. We’ve been won over by this excellent pictorial guide to how they operate, which reminded us of our own PAD system. (Check their website to find out what all the numbers mean!)
If you know of anywhere else where people can find stylish and accessible kitchen design please contact us and we’ll get the word out. It’s always good to hear about companies which cater to the discerning less able.