Moving stairs

You’ve heard of wheelchair lifts that can be fitted in people’s homes and are also used on many bus and train services to allow wheelchair users the freedom to mount or dismount with little inconvenience. However, the effort to combine the practicalities of both stairs and platform lifts has been considered a pipe dream for so long. That is until now.

We, Sesame Access Systems are an engineering company who have installed our moving stairs lift into numerous public, private and listed buildings and Heritage sites. This product consists of a lift with button control which has a staircase superimposed on top of it. By attaching the steps to actuators, these steps become moving stairs and therefore allow disabled people to use the lift platform in order to travel up or down as required.

This dual purpose is the major selling point of the moving stairs lift, meaning that museums, colleges and similar public and listed buildings that want to install our wheelchair lift can simply remove a section of their existing staircase and replace it with our lift. Every lift that we build is made-to-measure so that it can fit into any flight of steps, whether they are steep, narrow, wide or shallow. We also offer stylish ways of cladding each wheelchair lift to make it easy on the eye for visitors and building staff alike, everything from light grey to teak wood and even carpets.

The key advantage of this arrangement over having a ramp installed is the amount of space required to install such a ramp. On a narrow street with a small staircase, a replacement ramp would require a much steeper gradient than would be suitable for any wheelchair user in order for the ramp not to extend into the road and block any oncoming vehicles. Additionally many entrances may not have the sufficient length of entrance required the make the ramp a safe gradient according to British Standards.

By contrast, as long as there is a staircase available, our lift can be installed into the premises complete with moving stairs. Even after the lift has been put in place, people won’t generally notice that the stairs have changed at all given the way that we can discretely clad the lift with such a small gap between each of the moving parts. Our lifts can have all manner of features depending on the customer’s requests whilst adhering to the highest level of safety features according to British Standards, including rising barriers or wheel-stops that help to avoid any accidents should the lift user lose their balance and also include button stations that work in the same way as a standard lift.

We at Sesame Access have been making these lifts since 1996 and we are always looking for innovative ways of developing multi-purpose lifts that are specifically designed to allow wheelchair users a means of entering any public building without damaging the overall feel of the building, causing inconvenience for the wheelchair user themselves or otherwise risking their well-being. We believe that our products are the perfect way for this vision to be realised and further the cause of disabled access.