You can do this by merely placing small blocks of wood under the legs of your chairs and sofas. You may also want to raise pieces of furniture to make it easy for wheelchair users to sit. You’ll need to arrange furniture so that there’s at least a five-foot turning radius and a 32-inch path. Wheelchair users need a lot of space to move around.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE DOOR WIDTH INSTALL
They make it easier to get in and out of a tub or shower and on and off the toilet.īe sure to install a non-slip mat in the tub and use a toilet riser to increase the height of the toilet for people who have trouble bending over. Grab bars in the bathroom are essential to anyone using a wheelchair. Inside closets, lower the clothing rods to make it easier for wheelchair users to access their wardrobe. If extending the doorway isn’t an option, you can remove the doors from their hinges and install pocket doors or replace the doors with drapes or curtains. The standard doorway width is 24 inches, but you’ll need to extend it to at least 30 inches for wheelchairs to get through.
There’s a good chance the doors in your house aren’t wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair, whether that’s a lightweight wheelchair or a sturdier power chair. Here are some things you can do to make your home wheelchair accessible. She sleeps in her bed, and eats at the dining table – all because Linda muttered a few words during a therapy session.While most public buildings are designed for wheelchair accessibility, the same isn’t always true for private homes, where using even a lightweight wheelchair can be a challenge.īut with a few modifications, it’s easy for people who use wheelchairs to get around inside their homes. Today, my mother is happily tooling around the house, bumping into walls and backing into appliances… because her wheelchair fits through the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. You can’t really tell how big of a difference in width there is, but the above photo is with handrims, below is without. Your wheelchair user can easily propel themselves using the wheels. Remove both rims and, viola! You have a wheelchair that’s total width is about 25″. You will notice the handrim getting loose. Work your way around each wheel, removing the screws.
They come right off in ten minutes or less. The spacers between the handrim and the wheel are part of the handrim, and that is where the screws attach and hold the rim in place. These screws hold the handrims on the wheel. On the backside of the wheels you will see screws. Make a wheelchair fit through narrow doorways by removing handrims:Įstimated Time to remove handrims: 10 minutes And then, the little voice of Linda the PT chimed in with the fact that you can remove the handrims. I can return or donate the one they prescribed and everyone will be satisfied. Next, I thought, “the heck with this prescribed wheelchair!” We’ll just buy an 18″ wheelchair and be done with it.
It’s a nice living room, but all her other rooms would literally be an inch out of reach. My poor mom was going to have to stay in the living room for the foreseeable future. The house is a small 1940’s bungalow with 26″, 27″ and 29″ doorways between rooms. The specifications on 20″ models were 28″ or 29″ total width. They couldn’t, because the prescription was written for a 20″ wheelchair. Even more important, is the fact that if you are injured and your wheelchair is part of your recovery through insurance, a prescription is written for your wheelchair and the prescriber’s job is to write the prescription for the best equipment for your recovery.Īfter doing my own research and deciding that an 18″ wheelchair would be the smallest chair that would be comfortable and fit through the doorways, I called the rehab facility and begged them to provide an 18″ wheelchair. She’s going to be living in this chair for a while. It is too small to accommodate my mom for such a long period of time. Yes, they do make 16″, 18″, 20″, and 22″ wide wheelchairs, and if my doorway is only 29″ a 16″ wheelchair would be great, except for two things: Many websites and articles were telling me that I should widen the doorways, or “get a 16 inch wheelchair”.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE DOOR WIDTH MANUAL
They come right off!Īfter much research and fretting over the situation, one of the Physical Therapists in the Rehabilitation Center casually said, “you can remove the handrims on manual wheelchairs.” We removed the handrims to make the wheelchair fit through our narrow doorway. Wheelchair door width minimum: Here’s what we did when we needed a 20″ wheelchair to work in a house with 29″ doorways (and if those doorways have a door hung, it’s closer to 27″, give or take). If you are looking for this information, locating exact wheelchair measurements is like searching for clues to a crime.  How wide is a standard wheelchair? Total width of wheelchair.
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