Word: wheelchair
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Your article on the eye-operated wheelchair [luly 5] made me see red. It is a prime example of technology running wild. As a quadriplegic, I can state that most of us can operate the joystick control on the battery-powered chair pictured by means of slight adaptations, the most extensive of which would be a lever reaching from the control to mouth level where it can be manipulated by tongue or lips. The costs of these adaptations are negligible compared with the $700-$900 price quoted for the Sight Switch, and they have the additional advantage of allowing...
UNABLE to run, climb or swing, most handicapped children can usually do little at a playground but watch wistfully as others enjoy themselves. But young patients at New York University Medical Center's Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine should now find their wheelchairs and crutches less hindrance to having fun. A new playground for them, and a model for other institutions like theirs, has been built with funds provided by the Office of Economic Opportunity. The 120-ft. by 40-ft. area contains an artificial waterfall under which the youngsters can walk or ride, a grassy knoll up which they...
DENIED the use of both arms and legs, the quadriplegic is usually condemned to inertia. But his sentence to stasis may soon be lifted by a switch that enables him to control a motorized wheelchair by eye movements alone. Manufactured by Hayes International Corp., and originally intended for use by astronauts, the Sight Switch uses eyeglass-mounted sensors to measure the intensity of light reflected from the whites of the operator's eyes. The sensors then transmit their readings to a computerized box on the wheelchair...
Adjusted to the eye color of the wearer and programmed to ignore such involuntary actions as blinking, the switch allows the user to start, stop and reverse his wheelchair by practiced movements of his left eye, and to turn it by moving his right. Currently being tested at a veterans' hospital in New York City and rehabilitation centers in Los Angeles and Houston, the Sight Switch -which costs $700 to $900-is remarkably easy to operate, even for the untrained. As one built-in safety feature, the computer is programmed to switch off the motor and bring the chair...
...their own money to start the magazine, have put together a first issue of jargon-free articles, which supplement the knowledge of professionals with the special expertise of parents and of the disabled themselves. One piece, the first of a series on recreation, explains how to improvise active wheelchair games that are not only enjoyable, but good for letting off steam. Another details a system for teaching the use of public transportation. The same article deals forthrightly with a highly sensitive and seldom-mentioned topic: the intermittent and "very human" parental wish "to get rid of or lose their disabled...