Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Including People With Disabilities?

[Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (Robsan]

Bob Jones asked:
>    Do any cohousing communities have experience with including members
>    with
>    severe disabilities?  
>    
>    I beleive Muir commons did some retrofit work, late in their project to
>    accomodate a child in a wheelchair. If I remember right, the family was
>    one of the late joiners, and the group realized that the site had some
>    unnecessary burdens to the wheelchair occupent, and so they made some
>    late changes.
>    
>    A Sharingwood we were careful to avoid any steps into the commonhouse,
>    and also put in a handicapped accessable bathroom (under construction).
>     There will one counter lower than the rest (desk height rather than
>    counter height) to allow a child or sitting person to contribute to
>    dinner prep.   We currently have no person chairbound, but probably
>    will eventually as folks age and such.  We had a summer visitor who was
>    chair bound and it taught us a lot about the difficulty of things such
>    as opening doors!
>    
>    RS