Making Homes Visitable: A Guide for Wheelchair Users and Hosts

Making Homes Visitable, a Guide for Wheelchair Users and Hosts. By Dot Nary, Ph.D., Brenna A. Buchanan Young, M.A., ARCH, and Val Renault, M.A. In an outdoor setting, a woman bestows a gift of flowers upon another woman, who is a wheelchair user Can Grandma, who uses a walker, still attend the family Thanksgiving dinner?

Can the friend who sustained a spinal cord injury in military service and now uses a wheelchair join the party to watch the big game?

"Making Homes Visitable" (PDF) provides information about making homes visitable by people with mobility limitations and why it matters.

As John Tschida says in the Foreword, "Humans are social creatures. We are hardwired to connect with one another, to gather and create shared experiences." But people who use wheelchairs and other mobility devices are often excluded from social gatherings because of barriers to entering and navigating homes.

This resource offers tips on how hosts and potential guests who have mobility limitations can have productive conversations about what would be needed to make a visit happen and how to assess the visitability of a home, followed by practical solutions for improving visitability. These tips are categorized as temporary, moderate or permanent based on the relative difficulty, cost and/or permanence of the solution.