Accessibility Hacks and Laura Mauldin's Disability at Home

Accessibility Hacks and Laura Mauldin's Disability at Home

This article relates to In Sickness and in Health

The website Disability at Home is a digital archive of creativity. Created by sociologist Laura Mauldin, the site documents the inventive ways disabled people and caregivers adapt their homes to make everyday life possible. The project grew out of interviews Mauldin conducted with 44 couples across the United States while researching her book In Sickness and in Health, which explores the emotional and practical realities of caregiving and disability in intimate relationships.

Because Mauldin could not always visit participants' homes—especially during the pandemic—she asked them to send photographs of the solutions they had devised. The result is a collection of "life hacks" that demonstrate how people build accessibility through trial and error, often with ordinary household items rather than specialized equipment.

Many of the most striking adaptations involve repurposed, everyday objects. A roll of blue painter's tape, for example, becomes an accessibility tool for someone with the use of only one hand: it can hold a piece of paper steady for signing or temporarily secure objects to a wall while they are being handled. Other examples include rubberized drawer liner placed under trays to prevent slipping, zip ties used to repair wheelchair brakes, and bells placed around a home so someone can easily call a caregiver from any room. Baby monitors can be used to monitor loved ones from different parts of the house. Other household tools find new purposes—such as a paint stirrer used to smooth out a small curb so a wheelchair can pass safely.

These adaptations highlight a central theme that also runs through In Sickness and in Health: the everyday labor of care is often invisible, yet it is filled with ingenuity. Rather than portraying disability as purely tragic, Mauldin's work shows how disabled people and caregivers actively reshape their environments. Together, the book and the website reveal a culture of practical creativity—one where accessibility is built not only through policy or design, but through the small, resourceful transformations of daily life.

Person holding a wheelchair by Gustavo Fring, via Pexels

Filed under Medicine, Science and Tech

This article relates to In Sickness and in Health. It first ran in the March 25, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.