We are planning on creating a concrete patio outside some sliding patio doors. This home we are designing is for our retirement years, so we wanted to make it as accessible as possible, given our limited budget.

We will have a ramp from our carport and a zero step entrance at our front porch doorway, but it doesn’t look like it would be easy to make our patio as accessible, as the house floor is about 18″ above grade level and there isn’t enough room for a full ramp to the patio.

So we would like to design the necessary steps to the patio to be fairly safe and usable for someone with a walker. I can have the main patio poured to be about 16″ below the door entrance. Would it be OK to create a 3′ square concrete platform at the entrance to the door? One 8″ step down from the door, and another 8″ step down to the patio. The 3′ square platform step should be big enough to handle a person and walker. No narrow steps to navigate.

I just don’t know if it’s OK to have that 8″ step down directly from the doorway, or if we need to have that 3′ platform closer to floor level. This would probably increase the number of needed, and necessarily smaller, steps – which would be more difficult for someone with a walker to navigate.

Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks!