Wheelchair Users—A Study in Variation of Disability

Abstract

This paper describes a method of studying the variation of space requirement between different wheelchair users. Twenty wheelchair patients performed the five tasks which made up the specific task of opening a door. Their space requirements were analysed statistically according to their functional disability and the variations between groups of patients calculated.

The variations between wheelchair measurements accounted for half the variation between patients. Allowing for this and observer errors, it was not possible to bring the standard deviation much below 4 in.

Variations also depended on the difficulty of the task; but different patients find different tasks more difficult. Although there is some correlation between skill and functional disability, psychological factors also played a large part in the few patients who did badly.

While this experiment furnishes no direct information about space requirements of wheelchair users, it establishes a possible technique for such experiments; the problems involved in sampling patients for further experiments are discussed.