The Sick or Injured Test
So yes, I have been thinking about this because of Reasons, those reasons being that I'm watching a lot of like, tiny house design videos while getting over the tail end of the flu, but it occurs to me that a lot of the awesome, clever, innovative, space saving designs I see would be utterly unusable when you, say, have the flu. I've been chronically ill my entire life, so it's second nature to me to look at a space or situation and go "How will I manage this when I'm feeling like a pile of dog turds somebody heated up in the microwave?" But a lot of people don't consider this kind of thing, and get blindsided when they're sick. So I propose a simple test for the livability of a house design:
Can an otherwise able-bodied person get from the bed to the bathroom and back into bed again with a fever, concussion, broken bone, or other minor illness or injury that most people inevitably suffer at some point in time? If not, this living space has failed the Sick or Injured test.
The most common way to fail the Sick or Injured test involves putting stairs, or worse, a ladder, between the bed and bathroom. Loft beds fail by default, and are a blight.
A solid majority of my household is mobility impared, and my brother uses a wheelchair, so I am well aware this doesn't cut it for a lot of people. But most disabled people are aware of what they need from a living space, and a lot of able-bodied people forget that they are walking around in flesh sacks that will sometimes fail on them, and that even if they are lucky enough to never become disabled, they will probably get the flu. So they should consider just what their living space will look like when they do.
