Written by: Robin Wearley, PA-C. MSc Emergencies happen. Having a plan during an evacuation is key for survival. Every second counts. Airlines currently have no good plan for evacuating passengers who use wheelchairs. As a flight attendant it has always concerned me when a wheelchair traveler was brought onboard the airplane on an aisle chair.…
Written by: Kim Lathrop, Information & Advocacy Specialist, California Foundation for Independent Living Centers It’s that time of year again where we spend the holidays with those who are near and dear to our hearts. For those who have family members far away or who want to skip town and go on an adventure, making…
Written by: Jessica Solimando, Marketing Account Manger for 101 mobility Halloween – the time for pumpkins and witches, costumes and trick-or-treating. For one day, we get a free pass to dress up and be whoever we want. However, wheelchair-users are familiar with the difficulty of trying to incorporate their devices into their costumes. We love…
Written by: Christina Mills, Deputy Director, California Foundation of Independent Living Centers The chances that most manual wheelchair users will eventually graduate to a power wheelchair are high. As much as I’d like to believe that my body, and specifically my shoulders, should work like they have forever (in a seated position, moving back and…
Written by: Farah Musallam Growing up and using a wheelchair I was self conscious about how different I looked from other kids my age. In elementary school, I was the only student in the entire school that used a wheelchair and I obviously knew I was different, especially when all I wanted was to be…
Triumph Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to help children, adults, and Veterans with Spinal Cord Injury/Disorder to triumph over their disability and to inspire them to keep moving forward with their lives by pushing themselves to get better every day. Triumph works to minimize the obstacles that one faces after suffering…
written by: Emily Flynn Ability Tools recently had the pleasure to be a part of the Bay Area Abilities Expo in San Jose. We met so many wonderful people while working our AT showcase booth. This booth was filled with all sorts of different pieces of assistive technology where attendees had the opportunity to…
Re-post from Assistive Technology Blog The crutches, as a device for providing temporary or permanent support, have not seen much of a design overhaul since civil war. However, there is a new crutch in town with a revolutionary design. The M+D crutch, designed by a couple of industrial engineers, is a crutch that takes away…
Written by: Emily Flynn; Ability Tools Information and Advocacy Specialist Ability Tools recently attended the Bay Area Abilities Expo in San Jose and it was an awesome success! For the third time, Ability Tools was lucky enough to hold the AT showcase space. This meant that we were able to provide demonstration of many different…
Written by: Luke C. Hsieh, Assistive Technology Advocate, Community Access Center While there has been little exciting news in the realm of high-tech consumer electronics – other than the soul-eating-time-devouring-productivity-killing Pokemon Go – there is some news in the tablet word. Sometimes masquerading as a therapeutic app for people with agoraphobia, or, more generally, a…