Victoria School & Specialist Art College

Victoria School & Specialist Arts College in Birmingham is a community special school for pupils aged 2 to 19 years who have cognition and learning difficulties in addition to physical disabilities and/or complex health care needs. In 2019, they decided to design and install a new food technology room with ROPOX kitchen solutions. Now, staff and students can all enjoy cookery lessons due to the accessible interior of the room.

Going from an adequate to a fully accessible food tech room

The existing food tech room was adequate, but it was not fully accessible. This meant that many students could not take part in kitchen activities. They wanted to redesign the room to ensure that all students could actively take part in cooking lessons.

The new room incorporated four sinks and three hobs mounted on height-adjustable ROPOX kitchen worktops. The kitchen tables have no base units, and this allows wheelchair users to get close to the table. Since you can adjust the table height, both seated and standing students can use the hobs.

You can set the worktop heights separately

The worktop height of the tables can be operated separately. This means that a student in a wheelchair can work alongside a standing student because they can work at a table level that fits their balance and reach.

Furthermore, there are ROPOX height-adjustable table frames in the room. They can easily be moved around and used for what purpose is needed – from kitchen preparations to dining. Just as the kitchen worktops, you can adjust the height of the table frames either electrically or manually. With a height adjustment range of 30 cm, it makes them suitable for almost every student regardless of mobility level and height.

Students with different capabilities can work side by side

For the students, one of the main advantages of the new food tech room is that they can work side by side with students who have different physical capabilities than themselves. Taylor Johnson, who is studying at Victoria School & Specialist Arts College, says:

“I think the new kitchen is much more suitable especially for people in wheelchairs, I love using it and it is much better than the old kitchen as we can move the worktops up and down and reach the taps, sinks and cooker controls ourselves. We love our new kitchen!”.

The height-adjustable kitchen solutions enable the students to participate in kitchen activities. And for young people for whom turning on the taps or using a hob can be a huge achievement, it contributes positively to their education, confidence and self-esteem.