People buy vertical wheelchair lift mainly for convenience and safety for the benefit of the disabled families. But how to evaluate whether a wheelchair lift is practically helpful for the users with limited mobility? For some reason, even the manufacturers themselves have difficulty answering this question in a clear way.
To help you choose a qualified and quality wheelchair lift for home use, 5 tips are concluded in the following parts.
1. Decide the lifting height
For indoor wheelchair lift installation, you have to measure the ceiling height and floor height of your buildings, from which the lifting height can be determined. While as to outdoor installation, you should measure the vertical height of stairs or floor height directly to decide the lifting height. Any errors will result in installation troubles or failures.
2. Preserve installation space
Enough installation space and proper location have key relation to the future operation of wheelchair lift, for it’s an arduous work to adjust or change the installation site once it is installed. A perfect place that is convenient for the wheelchair people’s access will smooth their way to higher floors.
3. User-friendly design of the wheelchair lift
The wheelchair lift platform should be designed according to two major factors: the wheelchair structure and the simple access to enter the platform. Before placing an order, check out whether the platform size matches with the wheelchair size and structure. Also some more space should be reserved on the platform to adjust the direction of wheelchair during the lifting and lowering process.
4. Considerate safety devices
Bad designs or absence of protective devices can all lead to accidents or even injuries during the service time of wheelchair lift. Emergency drop button on the platform, guardrails, manual lowering valve, safety doors with interlock, remote controller, etc are the common safety devices which can prevent accidents when power failures or other emergencies happen.
5. User-centered easy operation and control
Wheelchair lift users are a special group with different level of disabilities. So user-centered operation and easy control methods are a must for their comfortable experience. Those designs that require much dexterity and strengths to enter the platform or operate the wheelchair lift are not good ones.
