| Minimum
of one sink and one toilet with a wider doorway. A 30-inch
by 48-inch rectangle of open space is required, this is in
addition to the space provided by the door swing.
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Potential
Impact of Adopting Visitable Housing
Creating
environments that minimize barriers and facilitates engagement
in everyday activities at home, at work, and at play, is key
to successful participation in the community. More Visitable
homes will help to address the following issues.
Social:
Impacts related to isolation,
costs to having people leaving their homes for nursing homes,
falls, depression due to lack of social contact and related
issues.
Education:
The public needs to be aware of their housing options, in
order to make informed decisions. University design programs
need to create curriculum for students to encourage accessibility
in the built environment. This initiative will grow active
citizens through education and community partnerships.
Heath
Care System: The case
needs to be made for fewer stair induced injuries, less time
spent recuperating in a hospitals that Costs to caregivers
who have to deal with inaccessible environments,
The
correlation needs to be made between falls and the built environment,
between longer hospital stays and healing at home in a Visitable
environment, as well as the need for Visitable homes to reduce
the number of older adults moving to formal care home settings
when it may not be necessary to give up their independence.
The
future requires more community support to facilitate ‘aging
in place’ which could reduce some stress in the hospital setting
possibly translating to faster healing times due to increased
well being in home setting and ability to get back to work
faster. Research needs to be conducted on informal and formal
caregivers and if their jobs are made easier with fewer architectural
barriers.
Government
Policy: This research
will help the federal government, provincial governments,
urban planners and policy makers to address the urgent issue
of adequate housing due to the quickly increasing aging demographic
and disability in the population. This research will equip
the government at all levels with the knowledge needed to
make future policy recommendations. There are many housing
principles being applied all over the country such as green
design, Flexhousing, Smart Growth, Safer Homes, just to name
a few. A lack of communication and strategic planning has
left these projects in isolation.
Environmental:
Cost benefit-analysis is needed in regards to environmental
and monetary savings when Visitability is incorporated in
the design stage rather than renovating later.
In
2002, fifty percent of all Canadian waste generated, originated
from renovations, construction and demolition sources. Investing
in best practices in all areas of housing and incorporated
features such as energy efficiency and Visitability at the
design phase of all new homes the waste would be considerably
reduced. Sustainability would be achieved both in environmental
terms and as a community.
Visitability
is an opportunity to further promote both energy efficient
and Visitable homes together, as to reduce overall lifecycle
costs.
Economic:
Besides integration and safety concerns, lack of basic access
has major fiscal impact because of the high cost of removing
architectural barriers in existing, inaccessible homes as
compared with the low cost of incorporating basic access features
in new construction.
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Canadian
Centre on Disability Studies
56
The Promenade
Winnipeg,
Manitoba
Tel:
204 287-8411
Fax:
204 284-5343
TTY:
204 475-6223
Email:
ccds@disabilitystudies.ca
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