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3.4. Accessibility Needs and Home Assessments
Accessibility Needs and Home Evaluations
- What are accessibility needs?
- What if I want and/or need a home evaluation and assessment?
- Downloadable Home Assessment Form
Determining Your Accessibility Needs
Working together to meet your needs
The supplier, clinician, and you will work hard to decide what equipment is best for you based on your evaluation. Bringing your Wheelchair Checklist from Chapter 1 could be very helpful in sharing your needs and perspective with your clinician and supplier.
Will your wheelchair work in your physical environment?
Together, the clinician and supplier will look at your accessibility needs to ensure that the recommended equipment will work in your specific physical environment (e.g., home, work, school, vehicle, church, etc.) and will maximize your independence. Sometimes the supplier will conduct a home evaluation to verify that you will be able to use the prescribed wheelchair in and around your home.
During this process, you must ask yourself, does this wheelchair meet my accessibility needs? Or, in other words, will this wheelchair be useable in my physical environments?
Home Evaluations and Assessments
To help you find this out, the therapist or the supplier should take the wheelchair to your vehicle, home, school, etc. to ensure it will work for you. However, you may have to advocate, or speak up for yourself, to get a home evaluation because most insurance companies will not pay for this service. It is important you think about how your equipment will fit into different physical areas of your life.
Want to know how your home's accessibility can be improved? Share with your clinician the downloadable 'Home Assessment Form' below.
Additional information about using your wheelchair in your vehicle and home are available in Chapter 7.