Technology aids disabled homeowners

Jessie Harris, 67, gets a big lift from her home elevator. The retiree lives in a three-story A-frame near Sunrise Mountain she refers to as her "dream home," and thanks to the assisting device, access to all three floors is easy.

Harris, who uses a cane and sometimes a wheelchair to get around, calls the elevator a "necessity." Like many homeowners with a disability, Harris lives independently -- with a slight boost from some specialized technology.

The elevator in Harris' home is one option in assisting special needs residents with accessibility and safety. Brewster Thackeray, a spokesman for the National Organization on Disability, said thousands of items are available to enhance nearly every room in the house for occupants who need a helping hand.

"There's a great variety, depending on what the need is," he said. "It all depends on what one needs for one's disability and what circumstance one is living in.

"One-fifth of our population has one kind of disability or another, and with age, disabilities increase dramatically. The longer one lives, the more likely they will acquire a disability if they don't have one. Many disabilities require special household devices."

Las Vegas, by virtue of its many retirees, can be supportive of that market, according to Andrea Tannenbaum, president of Dynamic-Living.com. Her company is headquartered in Windsor, Conn., but she still deals with "quite a few customers" in Southern Nevada who purchase the products that make their lives more manageable.

"The reason I started Dynamic Living is that these things were entirely too difficult to find," she said, referring to the company's inception seven years ago. "They were not presented well for the consumers who needed them. It wasn't fun to shop for them, the service wasn't good, and the catalogs containing these items were ugly. So, we decided we could do this better and make it a more pleasant experience for people."

The result is a seemingly endless array of gadgets that include modified appliances low enough so individuals in wheelchairs can reach them, talking clocks or prescription bottles for visually impaired homeowners, or door knob adapters for the arthritic occupants of the home.

Tannenbaum's company provides items for many other special needs. The size of the resident's home is also a factor. Harris, for example, moved into her three-story residence from a one-story house and realized a dream she's had since childhood. Since she suffers from a heart and lung condition, she had the elevator installed early on during her home's extensive renovation.

"There's a bathroom on the third floor, my grandchildren's room is on the third floor, and so is the sitting room," she said, adding that the second floor houses her bedroom and laundry room. "What I like is that the elevator enables me to live alone -- I have that choice. I can live independently if I want."

Some purchasers of the products are seniors who have lived in a typical home for years then, over time, have come to need the extra safety and accessibility. Tannenbaum mentioned a study done by the AARP in which 85 percent of the homeowners surveyed aim to stay in their homes "as long as possible," instead of moving to health care facilities.

Jeff Bruce, branch manager of American Access Systems in Las Vegas, stated that his company's residential elevators or wheelchair lifts can be viable alternatives for homeowners with a multistory residence hoping to avoid the "stress" of putting the house on the market.

"When you have people who are retired, they often don't want to sell their house," he said. "It's too expensive of a process to sell the house, so they think, `What can I do to get from the lower level of the house to the upper?' So they end up considering either our elevator or our wheelchair lift for their home."

Bruce noted that 95 percent of his company's elevators are constructed with the multistory home, as opposed to being retrofitted.

Tannenbaum said properly adapted doorways can be another necessary feature for wheelchair-using residents.

"For wheelchair users and people who use walkers there are issues with the doorways not being wide enough," she said. "We have the offset door hinge, which is designed in such a way that you get the full access of space of the doorway -- it pushes the door out and to the side, so it's less likely you're going to scrape your knuckles on the door. Many doors were built to be only 32 inches wide, and that's just not wide enough."

Grab bars for the bathtub, the toilet and in the shower are other frequently purchased items for special needs households, as are shower benches, and thermostats with large numbers on them. Wheelchair ramps can supply easy access to both inside and outside the home.

Light switch extension handles, voice-activated light switches, and lift-chair recliners are household gadgets available from Tannenbaum's online emporium, as well as a dishwasher and a combination washing machine/dryer that are both compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"We selected all the products by quality, by value, and our customers tell us whether they like things or not," Tannenbaum said. "I'm hoping more of these products become mainstream, and that there is no stigma attached to them. That way, people will not be concerned about installing changes that will make them more comfortable and keep them safer."

Tannenbaum said the market for these items is "growing healthily" since baby boomers are beginning to enter that stage of life, and that generation in particular is "bound and determined to stay as comfortable as long as it can" and it's led to the market becoming what it is today.

Over the past seven years, she has seen "double digit" growth in her company's sales figures.

Thackeray said there are 54 million Americans living with a disability.

"The very core part of our mission at NOD is to ensure that individuals with a disability can live in and participate in the lives of the community as much as they can," Thackeray said. "There are devices out there that allow people with severe disabilities and people who are greatly limited in their movement to now live fully or nearly independently. A great many people are in a position where assisting devices are of particular value to them."

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