Tillgänglighet – Att anpassa befintliga byggnader och närmiljön till ...

Abstract
Abstract
The number of elderly people in society is increasing, and the existing buildings
need to be adapted to meet their requirements of accessibility. Today a lot of the
existing buildings were built at 1965-1975, and these contain many difficulties for
people with impaired mobility.
The purpose of this work is to explore the possibility of the elderly to continue
living at home by studying the actions needed to adapting the common areas and
the neighborhood. The goal is to find out what the most common measures are,
and study some methods that are possible to use for an accessibility inventory.
A literature review has been made, where reference objects, laws, rules and
requirements regarding availability have been studied. A case study has been made,
where a study of the availability of the residential Tunet in Mjölby. The entrances
contain many different levels like steps and thresholds, there is no elevator and
entrance door is heavy to open. There is also no storage to place walkers in. Other
accessibility problems that exist in the area are few benches, inaccessible patios
and long walking distances to the waste disposal and parking.
To study the availability of existing residential, different survey methods were
used, such as TIBB - availability of existing housing, the Housing Enabler -
Methodology for the assessment/survey and analysis of accessibility problems in
housing and Västra Götaland inventory model. TIBB has been used in practice
and then evaluated. The inventory tool is suitable for a basic accessibility
inventory which takes account of elderly people’s conditions.
The measures that are most common in residential areas from the 1965-1075 is to
smooth out differences in levels, like thresholds, installing an elevator and
automatic door openers. Waste disposal in the area should be located as close to
the entrance as possible. Usually the possibility to rest by sitting down needs to
improve, partly by placing more benches in the area, and partly by placing some
form of sit opportunity in the entrance area. These measures improve the
availability and accessibility for the elderly, and affect the mental and social life as
they become more independent. To install an elevator is in many cases a costly
measure, and thus mostly not being made. To enable for elderly to keep living in
their homes, the public areas of a building and the neighborhood should be
adapted.
DRAFT
For an availability adjustment to be successful is the holistic approach of great
importance. When individual measures are implemented with no holistic
approach, is the risk that the problems still remains high. Therefore, an
accessibility survey should be made, to study all of the measures required to adapt
the availability of a neighborhood.
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