Wheelchair Accessibility Accessories

This page provides an overview of a client project I completed as part of my personal business, The Odd Artisan, in which I designed and built a series of customized accessories for a wheelchair user. The client was seeking to live more independently and desired accessbility tools that would aid in easier use and control of their wheelchair along with other elements of their life. This project involved an extensive amount of CAD and 3D printing to design many different hardware elements and electronics were integrated into the wheelchair’s existing system. The end result provides the client a full featured set of buttons that can be pressed comfortably even with limited mobility of the hands, adjustable motorized wrist supports for resting on as well as being able to reposition hands without support from others, and a number of other small features.

Motorized Wrist Supports

Due to ease of fatigue in arm muscles the client faces challenges of holding their hands for any long duration of time. This is particularly problematic for using the wheelchair’s driving joystick and not being able to relax your hand or else you can end up driving the wheelchair unintentionally posing a safety risk to the wheelchair user and others around them. Linear actuators were mounted to side rails of the wheelchair with custom brackets and topped with soft plastic pads. The movement of the actuators allows for the client’s wrists to be lifted and supported so their arms can relax and they also allow the user to reset their hand positions independently without needing assistance from anyone else. Each actuator is controlled by two micro-switches which were wired as DPDT sets so that there is simple forward and reverse operation of the linear actuators without the need for any kind of logic control like a microcontroller.

Light-touch Switches

Many off-the-shelf switches require a fair amount of force that can be difficult to actuate for someone with limited mobility and hand strength. While there are a handful of adaptive switches that require very low actuation forces they are not available in very small form factors. To provide full control to the client over the many wheelchair’s features plus additions such as the linear actuator control buttons we needed many switches that would fit in a very small footprint. I created custom switches that kept a small form factor by using readily available micro-switches but incorporated an internal lever design to also adapt the switches to be very light-touch only requiring a few grams of actuation force.

Button Panels

Adjustments of the wheelchair is done primarily through the use of buttons, even to power the chair on and off. A total of 13 buttons were added to the chair with 10 used by the left hand and 3 used by the right hand. With the custom designed light-touch switches having such small form factors they were able to be attached and arranged on sets of panels that were additional attachments to the wheelchair. The right side button panel is a small piece that attaches over the body of the joystick unit which makes for easy pressing by the client with their thumb. The left side button panel has many points of adjustment to have the buttons sit at different heights, angles, and horizontal positions so they can be moved to whatever is most comfortable for any given day. For when the client needs to get in and out of the chair it was important that the button panel would not be in the way and to accommodate this need the panel was mounted on a locking pivot arm that is spring loaded to hold its selected position.

Utility Storage

There are several items that the client wanted to keep stored and available on their wheelchair. These items include their cellphone, IDs and credit cards, a pen, and plastic straws. A custom mount was designed that sits at the end of the left-side button panel which holds the phone, cards, and pen in one unit. The design features two different points of articulation to allow the phone to be adjusted for easier viewing. A separate box compartment was also designed for straw storage as having these available is important for drinking when away from home.

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