An post on the secret benefits of accessibility

[conuly]

I remember having an argument with somebody about building houses accessible. I said that it only cost a few thousand dollars to build a new house with wide enough doors and a porch you can ramp for people in wheelchairs. It'd be hard to make something accessible to *everybody* at once (since two people may have complete opposite needs), but you can make the most obvious changes, right?

And he goes "Who'll pay for it?", like that's a big concern. I just didn't get it. I mean, once you're already spending a few hundred thousand for your new house, surely adding another ten thousand on to make it accessible doesn't break the bank, right? And it's got to be cheaper than renovating after the fact if something should happen.

Comments

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

See, and I *can* think of places it'd be annoying at best and actively hurtful at worst- tiny building spaces, for 1. Thos 6' hallways and 4' doors take up a HUGE chunk of floor space. If that house was built with 4' hallways and 3' doors no, it'd not be as accessible-b ut it'd be almost 30% smaller. Not a consideration when you're building it on a property of several thousand acres, but when you're putting it on a tiny city lot- or a townhouse- it could impact things negatively. I think it should be a choice and one that more builders make, with tax incentives to encourage them in that direction- but I'm not a big fan of UBCs anyway.