Accessibility Through Enhanced Technology
The Freedom Chair
The Freedom Chair is a wheelchair designed like a sit down mountain bike. It was invented by MIT students and instead of turning the wheels wtih your hands, there are levers on either side of the chair that the ride must push. These levers were built similarly to bycicle gears. The Freedom Chair is described as "a vehicle designed to get a person in a wheelchair off the pavement and onto rougher, natural terrain-trails, woods, snow, and sand."
The C Brace Bionic Exoskeleton
The C Brace was designed for people who have no mobility of their legs. It contains sensors that measure knee angle, ankle flexation, direction, velocity, and acceleration. The braces can be set to different modes through a bluetooth remote (walking, sitting, or biking). A doctor who observed Kozel explained how the braces work, "Think of walking as a controlled fall. You lean forward, and just when you're about to tumble onto your face, you swing your leg out and catch yourself. Kozel's hip muscles allow her to swing her legs forward. But she has no control over muscles any lower than that. She can't bend her knee or foot, and her leg muscles don't work." Currently they run for about 75,000$ each but hopefully with advancing technologies, they will become more attainable in the near future.