Visitability surveillance, prevalence, and correlates in Florida.

Background: A primary means of social connection is visiting friends and families in their homes. Visitability is designing houses in a way that enables people to visit others' homes regardless of physical limitations or use of mobility assistive devices.

Objective: The goals of this study were to develop a set of questions about visitability that could be used for surveillance and to assess the prevalence and correlates of visitability features in Florida.

Methods: We added five questions to the 2011 Florida Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (n = 12,399 respondents) and used complementary log-log regression models to estimate the prevalence ratio of each visitability feature.

Results: The prevalence of visitability features in Florida homes was high for respondents with and without disabilities, though there was variation by visitability feature. A level entrance to the home and wide doorways were present in most respondents' homes (84.9% and 86.2%, respectively), while a main floor bathroom (59.6%) and a zero-step entrance (45.4%) were reported less commonly. People with a disability were less likely to report that their own home had doorways wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair compared to people without a disability (PR = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.80-0.95). Visitability features were less common in households with lower income and also in trailers or mobile homes than in detached single-family homes.

Conclusions: The survey questions used in this study could be implemented in other states to measure and track visitability and monitor progress toward the Healthy People 2020 goal. Building or retro-fitting homes to include visitability features could increase the participation and inclusion of people with disabilities in community life.