How can I make my accessible kitchen safer?

Here are some tips for making your accessible kitchen safer:

Consider putting child safety locks on all cupboards and cabinets. In addition to keeping children out of hazardous materials, these are helpful for keeping people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia safe as well.

Get in the habit of closing cabinet doors and drawers when you are not actively using them; this will cut down the risk of someone else walking into them. Mark the end and inside edges of doors and drawers with strips of bright-colored tape so that someone with poor vision can easily discern that the door or drawer is open. Safety yellow/orange or red is often a good choice but use the color most visible to the one with the visual impairment.

Use lights and vibrating alarms to remind you that you are cooking:

• Turn the oven light or the light over your stove on to remind you that you have something in the oven.
• Attach a Sonic Boom Alarm Clock with Bed Shaker to a lamp in the kitchen. (Yes a bed shaker). Use as you would an oven timer. Set the alarm for when your food should come out and when time is up, it will flash, vibrate, and emit a 98-decibel audible alarm; one or any combination will get the attention of someone who is deaf, hard of hearing, or who tends to forget they were cooking.
• Light-weight timers and pagers that are worn on your body will signal the wearer, by vibration and audible alerts, when it is time to remove dinner from the oven.

Tame electrical cords either with commercial cord hooks (plastic devices with hooks on each end to keep a cord wrapped), hook and loop fastener tapes, or twisty ties, or by hiding them in empty toilet paper or paper towel tubes.

Wrap pot handles with contrasting tape for better visibility; always turn pot handles to the inside of the stove.

Remove throw rugs (tripping hazards) and reduce clutter. A neat and orderly kitchen is safer and much more enjoyable to work in.