Disabled chair lift

Sesame's Disabled Chair Lifts provide a temporary replacement to stairs. See more of our projects here

Disabled wheelchair access has risen to greater prominence recently and prompted the demand for buildings that are access friendly for people with walking difficulties and other wheelchair users. It is only fair that disabled people shouldn’t have to deal with the inconveniences of not being able to enter a public building as a result of their condition. When it comes to Heritage buildings, this is a particularly challenging issue as they depend on both disabled and able-bodied visitors to uphold their reputation as well as ensuring that the site is maintained for generations to come. Naturally, any construction work on their site might compromise the building’s character.

Nevertheless, for existing buildings the most frequent option is to design disabled chair lifts and ramps around the current design making it much easier for those with walking difficulties to enter a building. This is a good step forward but at Sesame Access we have a better alternative.

We specialise in manufacturing disabled chair lifts that are tailor-made for each client and have been approved by British Heritage as providing a welcome addition to Grade I and Grade II listed buildings, particularly since British Heritage are eager to encourage disabled people to visit these sites. This is possible because we can provide cladding that matches the surrounding material so as to render it almost invisible. Upon activating the lift, it can be used by visitors to go from ground floor to the level above or below.

At Wandsworth Town Hall we have installed a disabled chair lift complete with retractable stairs, a lamp post base unit, button post stations on the upper and lower landing, handrails and a control post attached to the lift. The stairs consist of 6 moving steps and 1 fixed stair. When the lift is activated, the stairs retract and the disabled chair lift emerges. The stainless steel border, which is the tip of the wheelstop, rises around the platform to secure the wheelchair user within the platform. Once the platform has reached upper landing level it will cease to move, and the rising barrier at top landing will descend into the floor to allow the user off of the lift.

At the button post station, as well as having buttons to raise and lower the disabled chair lift we have an assistance bell installed in case anything goes wrong. We were asked to replace some old and damaged steps in order to accommodate the lift that we were installing and that they would be covered in a layer of Portland stone. It was decided that the lamp post base needed to be extended by at least 15mm to meet up with the Sesame requirement, leaving a 6mm gap between the lift steps and the lamp post base.

As with the above lift, Sesame’s wheelchair stair lifts are built with user safety in mind as we want to ensure that all users can use our lifts with full confidence and that they are up-to date with our safety procedures. Please visit the accompanying link for more information about Sesame Access.