A few more pics

Whatever you do, you need railings for your mom.

I like the idea of railings for the steps. How about a concrete walkway?

I don’t know what kind of railings can be added to concrete steps but iron. If you want to have them match your porch railing then you might have to build steps out of your porch material - wood or composite decking. I’m sure your concrete contractor friend can advise. If you can do stamped concrete, I might do something like this. Do you need a walkway out to the street or just to the driveway?

Great ideas, the railing idea is a good one!

As far as the walkway? Should it be a slab that goes all the way to the porch? Should it be a narrow walk way that runs along the porch, or a walkway that is like 3ish feet, comes from the driveway and then bends towards the stairs leaving sod between the walkway and the porch?

I like landscape space between the walkway and porch. I would shape it similarly to what I posted above, with room for planting close to the house. If you don’t like gardening, you could carry the pavement up to the porch and just plan on having some very large planters to go in that area, for softness and color. Here they are using it like a patio:

Here is with simple foundation planting:

No foundation planting, just pots

This would be a good time to change the slope of your porch gutter so that it drains on the other side of the porch where there will not be a walkway to undermine. You'd still need a buried drain area from the existing downspout since it serves the sloping garage roof, but it would have less flow to deal with and less to clean out.

If your mother gets out of the car in the driveway, park the car as usual, then see where she would start up the walkway. A gently sloped walkway leading to 2-3 steps with railing may be possible. Your concrete contractor friend can advise on slopes. It doesn't look like avoiding steps would be possible, but you can ask.

A couple of things I can agree with: choose now if you would like foundation plantings in front of your railings, and as long as ordinance will allow, please move the downspout to the other side, fastening it to the porch post, which could also have the benefit of making the post look a bit beefier and robust. It seems natural to drain out to the slope which would move the water swiftly away from the foundation. Just take steps to prevent erosion.

Since you have a concrete guy, I would suggest a broad level walkway that is the width of the entire porch and gently pitches away from the house just enough to shed water. If I were pouring, I would do a very subtle half-moon arc that makes the patio/walkway narrowest on the edges including the driveway and deepest in front of the stairs. If foundation platings are chosen, keep the bed deep enough that the plants won’t touch the porch even after growing to mature size for air circulation.

If no plants, run the walkway right up to the porch.

Your guy can use concrete block to build the stairs and cap the treads with real stone. THAT will be the big splurge. He can skim the block so you can’t tell its block. Since it would all be concrete, he can put anchors into the walkway at the foot of the stairs which allow wood posts and railings or vinyl, if that is what your porch posts are now. Just don’t let him imbed wood posts into the concrete as they will rot before the concrete fails and you’ll never be able to replace them without cutting up the concrete.

Obviously you have a frost line to deal with, so the anchors may have to be big or have a deep footer below them to be to code. IDK because its been a long time since I’ve lived in snow country.