Wheelchair Diffusion blog

Katja over at the Brokenclay blog has terrain tricked her manual wheelchair for an upcoming camping trip.

Have a look at what she did to her Quickie GPV to ready it for the great outdoors.
http://brokenclay.org/journal/wp_archives/2007/07/07/off-road-wheelchair/

I have met many people over the years but only two that have worked in the logging industry. One fellow was an old timer who had logged up in Maine, and the other was a younger fellow who was tramping around the logging operations in the American Northwest.

In both instances it was obvious by the weathered faces and leathery tough hands that logging was hard work. A great deal harder than anything that I would want to attempt but something that Josh Woodcock had to get back to.

Josh is a young man whose family runs a logging operation in the Missouri Ozarks. Josh was rendered a c-5 quadriplegic following a car accident, but that disability didn’t last long. Eight weeks in a rehab center then back home and back behind the controls of a massive log loader where he racks up nine hours a day and 30 tons of logs every 10 to 15 minutes.

As is most often the case, access issues and assistive technology take a hard turn in rural areas. Curb cuts, and electric scooters light enough to heft into your car trunk take a back seat to finding technology that can help get someone behind the wheel of a tractor or behind the sticks of a log loader. Hunting around for off-the-shelf technology is not an option. In many cases the technology just doesn’t exist.

In Josh’s case family members leaned on their “redneck ingenuity” and some spare parts to modify the cabin and the controls of the log loader. He uses a manual wheelchair, goes to work in an adapted pickup truck, climbs on-board the loader with the help of a wench, and tames the log-grabbing monster by way of the do-it-yourself adaptive hand controls.

There is no legs to wheelchair superstar story here. This is all about good folks who rose up tall to the occasion and made a big thing happen.

You can read the article by Eric Syverson in Rural Missouri.

Interested in rural assistive technology? Check out these links.

With the holidays closing in fast many of us are gearing up for some serious shopping. Getting the “right” toy for a child is not always easy. The decision becomes much more difficult if the child has special needs.

AblePlay’s independent toy reviews and detailed information can help you get “beyond the box” to understand each toy’s unique features, creative ways each toy can be used with children with special needs and skills that will be enhanced as a result.

Check them out before shopping for those special toys for special kids.

How many calories do you burn off pushing a wheelchair around? Far fewer than you would like and much less than you were hoping to.

Here’s some idea of what it takes to get that waistline trimmed down from the inside of a push wheelchair. You are probably not going to like this but don’t work yourself up to the point where you need a chocolate fix. That will only make matters worse.

Calories Burned Pushing A Wheelchair- 272 Calories Per Hour.

That is the equivalent of -

1 Grande Starbucks Caffe Latte - Made with whole milk or
0.4 McDonald’s Big Mac - With cheese or
3.4 Glasses of wine (3.5 fl oz) or
1 Snickers Bar or
1.3 Cans of Coca-Cola or
1 Slice of Pizza With Sausage or
1.3 Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Donuts or
1 Chicken Breast Battered and Fried.

If you consumed all of the above items you would need to push your chair for 8 hours to burn off the calories. Heck, you guys wouldn’t eat all of that stuff in one day. Would you?

A treasure for those of you planning to hit the road and take in some of our National Parks or historic sites.

Golden Access Passport
The Golden Access Passport is a free, lifetime admission pass issued to U.S. citizens or persons who permanently reside (are domiciled) in the United States, regardless of age, and who have a medical determination and documentation of blindness or permanent disability. The pass is valid at National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and Tennessee Valley Authority sites with admission fees.

At parks that charge individual fees, the pass admits the pass owner, spouse, parents, caregivere, and children. The Golden Access Passport also provides a 50% discount on federal use fees charged for facilities and services such as camping, swimming, parking, boat launching, and specialized interpretive services.

Golden Access Passports may be obtained only in person and upon proof of eligibility. It is suggested that you call ahead to make sure that you bring the appropriate documentation.

Check out the free info-to-go publications on disability and other related topics.

These informative publications range in topics from Disability Etiquette to Wheelchair Fire Safety with stops at Accessible Air Travel and The Americans With Disabilities Act.

These publications are provided by the United Spinal Association and are free to download. They are in PDF format so you will need Adobe Reader or you can just sit and stare at the error screen.

Sign up for United Spinal’s Free Monthly E-Newsletter to be notified of new publications.

On any given day you can find a story in some local newspaper regarding a powerwheeler who went on-roading and wound up nearly simulating roadkill. Power wheelchair speeds have certainly changed. For years the average speed was somewhere around 4.5 mph. Many scooters and chairs can now pump out close to 7 or 8 mph with a number of them getting to 10 mph and above.

Some other things haven’t changed. Many areas still do not have good curb cuts (or any), or for that matter there may be no sidewalks at all. Then there is human nature. That hasn’t changed either. You have the ability to do 10 mph you therefore want to, and you can’t get it done on some crowded sidewalk full of human obstacles. Granted, not the best reason for on-roading but… (more…)