Universal Design: Building a Wheelchair Accessible Home

For most of our adult lives my husband and I had wanted to build a house. It took his stroke for us to finally take the plunge. We really had no choice. The two houses that we owned were not good candidates to retrofit for Don's newly acquired needs and there were virtually no wheelchair accessible houses on the market.

Finding a builder who was knowledgeable about Universal Design in a town of 600,000 should have been easy---after all, the concept has been around since the 1980s---but it wasn't. The Home Builder's Association only listed one builder who specialized in that market niche and although his houses were beautiful, customized homes his starting price was twice what we had wanted to spend. But he was passionate about building for the disabled and even though he knew we couldn't afford his services he was generous with his time and he gave us the confidence we needed to go forward with our project.

All totaled, we called twelve well-known builders. Some had never heard of the term Universal Design. We were shocked! Other builders never returned our calls which, we believe, was a form of prejudge against the disabled. The building company we finally went with had built three wheelchair accessible houses, so they said, but we quickly found out that we had to bring our own research in to the design stage of the project. They were willing and able, but we were the experts when it came to Don's special needs.

Universal Design is not rocket science, but there is a wide variety of choices and decisions to be made. Just as every disability is different, every house for the disabled will be different based on the options taken and the budget you have to work within. The core, essential features of Universal Design homes are: