Making Your Home Accessible

Are you looking for ways to create an accessible space to live in? Perhaps you plan to build or renovate, or you need some tips and ideas to help you stay in the home you love? Accessibility is so much more than just grab bars in bathrooms! Whether you are creating a space that works for you, your client or your loved one, Build YOUR Space helps you make decisions that will allow for reduced physical energy needs, improved safety during everyday activities, increased independence and the preservation of dignity. Build YOUR Space "walks" you through the process of planning an accessible space, from a single bathroom to a whole home. You will learn how the big decisions, like windows and flooring can make as much of an impact as the small details of counter height and door handles. Build YOUR Space will help you customize your space to fit your personal requirements.For those who build, renovate and design new buildings, Julie will help you save time and money by doing it right the first time. Using her own home as an example, interviews from experts and further ideas from unconventional accessible spaces, Build YOUR Space highlights all the tips and tricks that you didn't know you needed to know. Julie Sawchuk is an Accessibility Strategist, certified by the Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification(R) program. As a published author and professional speaker, she combines her lived experience with her passion for helping people make smart decisions when planning for accessibility. Julie has helped plan the renovations of small century-old buildings on the mainstreet of her hometown, as well as the design of the newly constructed Blyth Cowbell Brewing Co. Two Canadian International Airports have become RHFAC certified with Julie's help and major Ontario cities have also come calling. Julie's home is a showcase of how accessibility is not just functional, but also beautiful.

Everyone involved in planning, design, construction, maintenance and owning/operating a building with a bathroom needs this book. Although it was written with public and commercial washroom designs in mind, the information also applies to residential spaces. No matter what kind of bathroom you are building, it's always easier to move a line on paper - before it is a permanent wall. Regardless of where you are in your construction, it's never too late to make improvements and build better bathrooms. People with disabilities are the largest minority group in the world. They have family, friends and colleagues that they shop, dine and travel with. Everyday millions of Canada consider accessibility when determining which business to visit. Whether it is a permanent or temporary disability, access to bathrooms will determine whether or not people choose to come to your restaurant, work at your business or use your recreation complex; they have the same needs as you. If people can't access your buildings and the washrooms, it will cost you their business.Building Better Bathrooms will guide you through design criteria for each primary accessible component of a bathroom. You will see what "better bathrooms" look like, how they measure up and, most importantly, you will learn why doing it right really matters.

Improved housing conditions can save lives, prevent disease, increase quality of life, reduce poverty, and help mitigate climate change. Housing is becoming increasingly important to health in light of urban growth, ageing populations and climate change. The WHO Housing and health guidelines bring together the most recent evidence to provide practical recommendations to reduce the health burden due to unsafe and substandard housing. Based on newly commissioned systematic reviews, the guidelines provide recommendations relevant to inadequate living space (crowding), low and high indoor temperatures, injury hazards in the home, and accessibility of housing for people with functional impairments. In addition, the guidelines identify and summarize existing WHO guidelines and recommendations related to housing, with respect to water quality, air quality, neighbourhood noise, asbestos, lead, tobacco smoke and radon. The guidelines take a comprehensive, intersectoral perspective on the issue of housing and health and highlight co-benefits of interventions addressing several risk factors at the same time. The WHO Housing and health guidelines aim at informing housing policies and regulations at the national, regional and local level and are further relevant in the daily activities of implementing actors who are directly involved in the construction, maintenance and demolition of housing in ways that influence human health and safety. The guidelines therefore emphasize the importance of collaboration between the health and other sectors and joint efforts across all government levels to promote healthy housing. The guidelines' implementation at country-level will in particular contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals on health (SDG 3) and sustainable cities (SDG 11). WHO will support Member States in adapting the guidelines to national contexts and priorities to ensure safe and healthy housing for all.

Written by the best-selling author of Multiple Sclerosis: 300 Tips for Making Life Easier and Parkinson's Disease: 300 Tips for Making Life Easier, Home Accessibility will help people with chronic illness, physical disability, temporary or permanent, and