Inventors Create Wheelchair Innovations for Safety, Affordability and Mobility

The prolonged use of a wheelchair is a reality for over 100 million people across the globe due to disabilities brought about by illness, accident or advanced age. Among the challenges faced by this large and diverse group are; lack of access to adequate wheelchairs due to poverty, the risk of serious and even life threatening injury due to wheelchair roll-away or wheel pinning, and impediments to travel caused by the cumbersome nature of standard wheelchairs.

Fortunately, there are innovators at work who have in recent years addressed these issues through some truly amazing wheelchair inventions.

Don Schoendorfer, a mechanical engineer from Orange County, California, was aware that many of the poorest people around the world live on less than $2 a day, and that when they were needed, standard wheelchairs were financially out of reach at several hundred dollars per unit. Schoendorfer had a goal; to create the world’s cheapest wheelchair for the benefit of poor people with disabilities.

Tinkering for three hours every morning in his garage workshop, Schoendorfer struggled to create a design for a wheelchair that would measure up to harsh terrains and...