Whilst using this web site, click whenever you see this image, to view a video of the picture shown.
Disabled Kitchens
Introduction:
It's important to design a disabled kitchen that includes all of your needs. We at Dream Kitchens are happy to talk to you and find the best method, to maximise your proposed kitchen and obtain the best design to suit your disability.
Disabled people face great difficulty when trying to use a standard designed kitchen. A wheelchair user being confined to limited movement has tremendous problems even getting close to the units let alone being able to reach deep inside them, and it maybe almost impossible to operate the hob, or view inside a sink bowl.
Using a working surface set at the standard height can be very difficult to reach, dangerous appliances such as kettles and boiling saucepans are often higher than the user.
Most built in appliances are manufactured with only able-bodied people in mind and seem to be designed to be accessible only to the most agile.
Wall units are always out of reach and so totally out of bounds.
Finding the best design - to suit you:
The final kitchen design needs your input, it will be your kitchen, and with past experience only you will know the most essential needs required to make it work.
The first task is to provide us with a list of specific requirements and other required values you feel important for us to bring into the design, remembering that every slightest detail given to us could be possibly crafted into the kitchen and ultimately make life easier and enhance your quality of life.
Appliance positions:
It is obviously extremely important that units and appliances are positioned where safely accessible. It would be foolish, for instance, to place an appliance in the far right hand corner of a kitchen when the person using it cannot use their right side. If you can't bend or lean forward, consider how much easier it would be to get the stored items to come to you, there are numerous pull-out accessories where you just reach down rather than reach in, so gain easy accessibility with the minimum of movement.
Wall units can be made to lower their contents without reaching up, tables, worktops, waste bins and ironing boards can pull-out at the correct height, and as shown in the picture above right, work surfaces can be raised and lowered to different heights, on different occasions, for different needs.
Mobile units can be included into the plan to move items easily from one side of the room to the other.
It is also critical to build in the appliances at the most advantageous height for different individual needs. The oven and hob, sink, dishwasher, washing machine and basically all other appliances can be incorporated at non-standard heights. The sink and hob can have knee-space underneath to allow a good view of the sink contents or watch food being cooked, and so to prevent the need for you to stretch forward.
Wheelchair footrest space can be left under base units to allow a person to move closer to the working surfaces, and thus also the wall units.
For those in a wheelchair the ability to get your knees under the sink and hob makes all the difference between being independent or frustratingly restricted in your own kitchen.
Appliances:
An extremely important consideration must be the specification of appliances. There are ovens such as Siemens with side-opening doors and the new "Liftmatic" in the picture below, which has a button controlled lift up door with access on three sides, allowing much easier manoeuvrability and allowing closer access,
the standard oven with a drop-down door is totally in the way and often dangerous to get near. Again as with the base units, the wire shelves can be attached to special drawer runners, which enables them to safely pullout to you, so eliminating the need to reach into the oven and be burnt by that dish of boiling oil.
Hobs can be obtained with front controls so they are easier to use, ceramic hobs can have touch controls eliminating any knobs to turn, and new forms of cooking such as the induction system should be considered to enable safer cooking.
The induction hob (shown right) is a further way to cut down the risk of being burnt, if you are unable to sense any heat this is a much safer method to work, this system operates by generating an electro-magnetic field which penetrates the glass-ceramic panel of the hob and induces a heat generating eddy current in the base of the cooking pan.
Induction hobs require ferro-magnetic cookware in order to function. The glass-ceramic hob remains cool, only being heated indirectly by heat reflected by the base of the pan, you can actually cook on top of paper.
Placing a saucepan on the induction cooker makes the hob heat up instantly. Removing it makes it cool down immediately, thus saving energy and making it almost impossible to burn oneself.
Since the cooker itself does not heat up, but is heated up by the hot saucepan, food that is no longer covered by water or that has run out of water while cooking will not burn. And of course, that means that no food will have to be painstakingly scraped off the saucepans afterwards.
The type of tap will also need to be chosen carefully, there are a large variety of lever operated taps available, all "quarter turn" in operation, there is also a selection of thermostatically controlled taps to protect you from getting burnt. Remember the maximum safe water temperture from the tap, 
without being scolded, should be between - 35C to 41C.
Refrigerators and freezers can be integrated at eye-level, or built under the working surface and still contain an easy accessible pullout interior. As you can see in the adjacent picture, there are even dishwashers with pullout drawers, rather than the awkward drop down door which gets in the way of the wheelchair.
Conclusion:
We at Dream Kitchens are waiting to help you achieve your "dream kitchen". For many years disabled people, could only dream of having a fully functional kitchen designed specifically for themselves.
It is now possible to produce stunning fitted kitchens for disabled people that truly cater for all the needs of your disability, and create a cooking area that is fun to work in.
Ring us on (01843) 584702 or 586664
or mobile 07737977396 now
and make an appointment for us to visit you today.
HM Customs & Excise have stated that V.A.T. is excempt for kitchen units manufactured specially to suit a disabled person; subject to the appropriate declaration form signed. The units must be purchased by a disabled person for his or her own personal use. The same exemption is extended to Charities who purchase units to be made available to handicapped people.
Please contact us to discuss your requirements...