Show Notes:
Interest form link to give feedback on a home accessibility tool.
Slide and Hide Oven with retractable door. Manufacturer in the UK.
Transcript:
Sarah: [00:00:00] You’re listening to Good Fit Poor Fit. Our podcast is part of The UD Project, a small business rooted in occupational therapy that looks at how the design of a home environment impacts how well people of different ages and abilities perform everyday activities. We chat about this unique perspective to boost your knowledge and help you consider what can be changed in communities like yours.
Learn more about our work at universaldesign.org.
Hi listeners, welcome back for another episode in our series, UD and Me. Today, Rebecca and I are back at the mic and we’ll be introducing you to Alexis Girata. She’s an occupational therapy student getting her doctorate at Virginia Commonwealth University or VCU in Richmond, Virginia. She’s going to be spending the spring semester with us here at the beginning of 2026 to work on some additional tools and resources to compliment our online home [00:01:00] accessibility courses. We hope they’ll provide you some additional options for helping problem solve different things within your own home or in your client’s homes.
Rebecca: Yes. And we’re so excited about the work you’ll be doing, Alexis, but first, let’s dive into your universal design origin story. Can you share a little bit more about yourself with our listeners, why you’re excited about universal design and a little bit more about your project.
Alexis Girata: Hi everyone. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here today and to have this opportunity to work with The UD Project for my capstone semester. For a little background on me, I completed my undergraduate degree in health science with a minor in family studies from James Madison University in 2023. As Sarah mentioned, I’m currently in my final semester of the occupational therapy doctoral program at Virginia Commonwealth University and will be graduating in May. Yay. I’m so excited. I became interested in home [00:02:00] modifications at a young age. Growing up, my dad had ALS, and as many of us know, it is a progressive disease, meaning that as the disease progressed, he would lose his functional abilities. Because of this loss in function, we had to make many modifications to our home to accommodate for him. My family lives in a three story house that enters onto the main floor. There are two steps to enter into the house, from either the front door or the garage door. The main floor included a half bath, no bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and dining room. There are 13 steps to go upstairs where all the bedrooms are and where the full bath is with a walk and shower. I’m sure many of the listeners can identify this is not the ideal setup for him. Eventually, my parents made the decision to make some renovations to our home to accommodate for his loss of function. This included changing our dining room [00:03:00] into a bedroom where he could sleep, and our half bath into a full bath with a walk-in shower that included a built-in shower bench and grab bars.
Rebecca: Thank you for sharing all of that, Alexis. I think it makes so much sense that you would find your way to this work, especially working with universal design specifically in the home setting. Did you always know that this was the type of work you’d hope to do in OT school?
Alexis Girata: Yeah, I definitely did. There was something when I was going throughout the program that I just kept going back to home environments and universal design, and it’s because of this experience I had growing up and being a caregiver for him. It gave me that firsthand experience about how beneficial it is to have the appropriate and accessible setup in the home environment to increase functional ability, and it is why I’m so passionate about it, so passionate about it that I decided I wanted to complete a capstone related to universal design or home modifications since [00:04:00] 2023 when I was actually doing my interviews for OT schools. And so three years later, here I am.
Sarah: And I know in our conversations together, even through the modifications that you did at your home, you actually realized after the fact that there were things you would do differently. And so I know that’s why this is a passion for yours too. And I am glad that you snuck that last little bit in there, Alexis, because, this is how we actually met. Alexis was interviewing for another OT program, that I was doing the interviews for, and she popped up on my screen and I had the pleasure of meeting her at that point. And while I’m sure Alexis, that was a very nerve wracking 20 minutes for an interview, which you did a great job, by the way. I introduced myself with our work at The UD Project and she shared her experience with her family doing renovations, with her dad, having ALS, and how that all impacted their family. So it is quite fun to see you years later finishing up your degree and building off your personal [00:05:00] experiences while working on your capstone with us.
So now that I’ve gotten us a little bit off track, like Rebecca mentioned earlier, can you share a little bit more about what you’ll be doing with us in your capstone project?
Alexis Girata: Yes, absolutely. I tend to think about it in two different parts with an overarching goal to educate people on universal design. One part of my project will be creating a resource with different laws and regulations regarding home modifications, as well as different funding opportunities in different states. This resource will include different tax, exemptions that are available and an individual’s needs to make modifications based on recent disabilities or ages, different grant options available or loan programs to assist with funding for home modifications. As many of us know, home modifications can be very expensive. This resource will [00:06:00] target the options available to assist with funding in different states, federal programs, and other organizations. The other part of my project will be assisting Sarah and Scott with determining the ease of use for a survey tool for both homeowners and health professionals. This resource will identify how accessible a home currently is and will direct the user to the appropriate courses to identify different adaptations or modifications that can be made to the home.
Sarah: Yeah, I’m really excited about both aspects of your project because funding is such a big barrier for considering how to modify current homes or even thinking about designing new, so I’m really excited to have this resource with our organization for different states, and I know you’ve already dug into all this information and some states have a ton of available options and some states don’t have a lot.
So I think it will be nice to have it all in one place. I’m also really excited about this simple [00:07:00] survey, to get people started with home access. Sometimes they can’t figure out like where to start. And so having a basic tool, to get people going, and then to point them to our courses, is gonna be really helpful. Listeners we’re gonna need your help. We will be generating some feedback about this tool before we launch it. So if you wanna participate in taking a look at it, giving us some feedback on how it’s used and the information it provides, I’m gonna put an interest form in the show notes and we can make sure we send that out to you, when it’s ready. S o now let’s jump into chatting about Alexis’s favorite UD things. I would love to hear about a non-home related UD feature that is particularly interesting to you.
Alexis Girata: So this one is actually one of my favorite non-home related UD features, and it is an inclusive playground. For those of you who do not know what this is, it is a playground that is designed to be inclusive for children with different [00:08:00] disabilities. These playgrounds include having rubber surfaces that allow wheelchairs or other, durable medical equipment to navigate the environment with ease. For those of you who do not know, durable metal equipment or DMEs is a piece of medical equipment that can be reused. So in this instance, another example would be a walker or rollator. These playgrounds also have ramps providing access to elevated playground components and connecting structures, wider access to playground structures, equipment designed to provide a sensory rich experience, and can also have swings with higher backs, armrest, and other safety features. I am not sure if you all do this too, but when I think of universal design, I tend to relate it with adults and the functional needs for an adult. These playgrounds remind me that universal design is not just for adults [00:09:00] and also not just to complete ADLs or IDLs in the home. design should be included in all the domains in occupational therapy, including the occupation of play, which is extremely important for children’s development because it can target different play skills, social skills, fine motor, gross motor skills, visual motor skills, and also increase their confidence to try new things and explore the world around them. An inclusive playground provides them with that opportunity to engage with their peers and build all those skills previously mentioned. And not only do these playgrounds allow children to engage in the environment, but it also allows their caregivers who may have a disability to engage with them on the playground, which can be a limiting factor for a caregiver who uses a wheelchair or other mobility devices. It provides easier access for the caregiver to navigate around the playground when playing with their kids.
Rebecca: I love that you pointed this piece out about [00:10:00] caregivers with disabilities. Of course, the idea of universal design playgrounds is fantastic and you know, it makes us think of kids with and without disabilities having equitable access to important playing and social interaction opportunities, but also a truly universally designed playground would take into consideration all of the people that would be using that space, including parents and caregivers who likely have disabilities as well.
So it’s equally important that the space be accessible to them so they too can participate in all of the fun activities with their kids and their loved ones. Now let’s get more into your main area of interest, Alexis, the home. Do you have a favorite universal design concept or product for a home setting?
Alexis Girata: I definitely do, and it was actually really hard for me to come up with just one answer to this question because there are so many great options. But as someone who grew up in the kitchen, I of [00:11:00] course had to choose one that can be found in the kitchen. This was actually one that Scott shared with me and Sarah a couple weeks ago. It was an oven that designed the door to come down like a normal oven, but then it would slide underneath of it so that it is not in the way when putting in or taking out items in the oven. I cannot tell you how many times I wish the oven door to just disappear, especially when I’m taking a hot and heavy turkey out of the oven. Not only will this oven allow for better body positioning for someone to take out an item from the oven and reduce the risk of someone using compensatory strategies like lifting with their back. It also allows for a clear space for a wheelchair user to roll in front of the oven without any obstacles. So not only does it increase accessibility, but also safety. Because the door is put away and the user doesn’t have to worry about hitting the hot [00:12:00] glass when removing something.
Sarah: This was definitely a fun product to see, and I just love all the new products that have come out even since we’ve put these courses out there. So I’ll put a link in the show notes for you because this is just evidence of new things coming out that people are thinking through. We typically recommend the side opening doors for ovens because that design also gets that door out of the way, but this retracting door is just as functional.
That big, heavy hot door is a barrier for a lot of people in how they would use the oven. So I’m really glad that you mentioned that. Industrial designers and engineers out there are super valuable in this space. Rebecca, having an engineering background yourself, I’m not sure if you have any common household appliances in the top of your mind that we need a redesign, but sometimes throwing the idea out there gets people thinking and creates a push for a need for change. Do you remember that one industrial design student we worked with who thought about a stove top with staggered burners to reduce the reach over a hot burner?[00:13:00]
Rebecca: Yes! That was such a fantastic idea. I loved it. Personally, if I could redo a kitchen appliance, I think it would be the fridge. I think all refrigerators should have pullout shelving, like lots of cabinets do these days. This would make it easier to actually use the entirety of my refrigerator, not just the very front edge of the storage, which is what I predominantly use now.
Also as someone who’s pretty short, I have to get out a stool to be able to reach things that are on a top shelf and pretty far back, but if I could slide that shelf out to me, I’d have a much easier time accessing stuff that I’d ordinarily have to go grab a stool for. But anyway, this could probably become a whole other episode, ways that we could make the kitchen more universally designed, so I won’t say too much more about that.
But Alexis, thank you for sharing your story and how you came to this work, we can’t wait to see what you do over the next several months, and listeners will be back soon with more content.
Sarah: Thanks for listening to Good Fit Poor Fit. If you want to learn more… first, find more [00:14:00] episodes with transcripts and show notes at goodfitpoorfit.com. Don’t forget to subscribe! Second, check out our courses at universaldesign.org.
We cover housing topics like advocacy, collaboration, home modification, universal design and task adaptations. Lastly, if you have questions or topics you’d like us to discuss, email us at [email protected]. Thanks for fitting us into your day.
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