AccessAbility

Gift Freedom !

by Ms. Preeti Monga,

Director, Silver Lining

Did you know, 80% of a human beings knowledge is acquired via eyesight? Can you imagine the nature of tough labor and hardship that goes into the building of an independent and competent visually impaired person! And so, the least a visually impaired person must have access to is a barrier free environment!

We are all aware that functioning in the mainstream for any disabled person is no easy task! Every moment is a challenge, with all sorts of mental and physical barriers to overcome! So, it may be a good idea to start by identifying and then consciously tiding over at least the physical obstacles! As these are the ones we can remove without much difficulty. A little information coupled with some sensitivity is all that is required!

Here are some ideas for making your home a comfortable barrier free place for all those who may have any difficulty seeing.

You could begin by scanning the approach to the home. If possible keep the walk way free of all boulders and big stones. Have all potholes in the area surrounding your house filled up and also get as much of the uneven spots leveled out.

Please inform all neighbors of the fact that you are visually impaired or have someone in the family who cannot see. This way they too will consciously watch out for any obstacles they may otherwise unknowingly place in the approach to your home. It will also help in them flagging up warnings in time in case of any unplanned diggings around your home. (People in our country are most helpful in such cases, they go out of their way to assist. But for this to happen, you are the one who has to sensitize them as to your needs). And, if you have abided by all the above rules, please do not throw the good habit of vigilance to the winds!

Well, now that the space outside your home has been taken care of, it is absolutely necessary to have the interior of the house made accessible as well.

If you are at a point of constructing or buying a home for a partially sighted or a blind person, please go for a design that has all rooms on a single level. You may at times like to go in for a duplex home but a home with split-levels is a complete no. Also do not have pillars standing in the middle of halls or passages. Do not have shelves or other decorative stands or items jutting out from walls. Don’t have flower pots or any other ornamental items set on the floor in the passages of the house, you can find remote out of the way corners for them.

Now lets look at the choice of furniture and other itinerary to go into your barrier free home. While choosing furniture for the living room, both esthetics and convenience needs to be kept in view. It will be wise to have no hard and sharp edged furniture. For example, corners and edges of chairs could be covered with fome / sponge and corners of tables could be rounded. Avoid having a center or a coffee table instead you could go in for small side tables. If one has to pass through the living room to get into the house, keep the passage on the side next to a wall.

Similarly in the bedroom, the bed can have rounded edges or you can do away with the bed altogether. Instead mattresses can be put onto the floor and used to sleep on. For seating arrangements in the bedroom and other rooms, one can go in for small cane stools (mooras) or bean bags, these will not hurt even if bumped into.

Every thing must have an allocated place in the house. That is, furniture or decorative items should not be rearranged without the knowledge of the visually impaired person in question. This holds true for things inside the cupboards, on the dressing table, on the floor and walls etc.

The kitchen is the most complicated area to be tackled, with all its jars and bottles, its electrical appliances and sharp knives, and of course the cooking stove and fire.

The rule here is practically the same. Do not even accidentally change positions of any item (no matter how trivial) without the consent of the visually impaired user. Utmost care needs to be applied as one is dealing with countless spices and other food items. If you don’t watch out you would be drinking tea laden with salt and pepper and eating chicken with sugar and a spray of washing powder!

Therefore to be on the safe side, you must code all jars and bottles with stickers embossed with brale writing as well as have containers of different shapes and sizes for storage. Every item ought to have a permanent spot for its keep. Strict instructions should be engraved on the kitchen wall stating "after use please put back every item on exactly the spot where you pick it up from". Knives and forks should be kept in spoon stands with the sharp sides facing down.

With automation becoming the buzz word, electrical gadgets have found their way into homes. Most of these modern day appliances have touch panel functions. Stick small stickers or "binndi" on the buttons as identification marks.

The bathroom is another area where there is room for confusion. With so many products now available in identically shaped tubes, it is easy to put shaving cream on your toothbrush and squeeze moisturizer on your hair mistaking it for shampoo! To avoid this, buy toiletry and cosmetics packaged in differently shaped tubes or bottles and jars. If this is not possible allot dissimilar containers for each item and get a sighted person to help you fill in the correct product into its rightful container and then place the respective containers in their respective spots. The towels of the visually impaired person should be of a different texture and size for perpous of independent identification. All clothes including under garments can be labeled with a special tag attached to them.

Here too, a separate cupboard or a fixed space must be marked out for keeping of the clothes. Small cloth bags can be hung inside the cupboards for hankies and other personal accessories. To make dressing a pleasure instead of a struggle, sets can be made of garments worn together. For example, a saree plus its blouse and under skirt can all be hung on one hanger. Matching shirt, trousers and belt along with the socks can be folded together and placed into plastic bags and put inside cupboards. Salvar kameez along with the matching dupata can be folded together and stacked similarly.

Lipsticks and nail polishes can also have matching stickers on them or the casings could be different for difrentiation. Shoe polish too can be like wise labeled.

The terrace, balcony or garden must also have a barrier free environment. Basically, there should not be anything positioned all over the floor area. All pots and flower beds should be carefully kept in corners and next to the boundaries. Plants with thorns should be avoided completely. But if you must have them, then they need to be kept well out of the way. In case your home has a garden, you can have the borders defined with tactile tiles. Also similar tiles can be used to differentiate areas like the drive way and the gate. You could use various other types of tactile tiles to deem ark the beginning and ending of flights of stairs too. These tiles can also be used as indicators to any change in the landscape like the border of a swimming pool etc.

As you may have by now noticed, it is not too difficult to make your home a barrier free area for persons with low vision or no vision. The rule of the game is: WHERE THERE IS A WILL THERE IS ALWAYS A WAY! With a little bit of care, FREEDOM is what you can gift to your visually impaired fellow beings! You too will be relaxed and stress FREE with the comfort of knowing they will manage beautifully. So lets go ahead and make these simple but crucial changes in our homes!