This is so interesting! I just started a Fellowship that focuses on accessible, inclusive housing for adults with IDD. I’ve been seeing different aspects of universal design and accessible housing I never considered. I toured a building in Portland that was built to be fully accessible and universal design. Elevator buttons were about 3-4 inches in diameter and accessed at foot level. There was a large kitchen on the top floor available for all offices in the building to use. The sink and stove both had buttons which allowed them to come in and out from the wall. Tall cupboards also had buttons that brought them down to a lower height and then back up to store. Oven door was a side door – a lot of things I hadn’t seen before (in the whole building, but the kitchen was the most interesting to me). I met with a builder who focuses on creating housing solutions that support behaviors and that blew my mind! So many things I’d never considered as part of accessible housing. One client would punch walls and continually break his hand. But they knew the behavior wasn’t going to stop, so they put a wall in the house that had a give to it and when he punched it, it absorbed the punch and he wasn’t hurting himself anymore. Another client would throw things down the toilet when stressed. It was a calming behavior to the client and it wasn’t going to change and it had gotten him kicked out of multiple apartments. So they created a toilet thats only function was for the client to throw things in and there was a system that cycled the objects through and the support worker could dig them out easily so it no longer plugged up pipes and caused problems for landlords. I’ve never looked at accessible design and thought about ways we can use it to support behaviors that are part of disability.  Its amazing to see the problem-solving and solutions out there!ReplyCancel

Maybe try a touch less flusher that can be installed in the tank? And then all it takes is a wave of a stick or something to active it!ReplyCancel