Guest Editorial Special Section on Wheeled Mobility

Abstract

OBILITY provides several important milestones in life. M Parents anxiously await their child’s ability to crawl and then wait impatiently to see their child’s first steps. The child then goes on to run. As a natural part of evolution, people begin to explore their environment. This exploration may include the home, the neighborhood, and the community. Mobility plays an important role in the lives of people with disabilities. The first wheelchair can represent a change from walking or the first opportunity for functional mobility. Later in life, the automobile becomes an important sign of maturity and freedom. Driving a personal automobile provides a degree of self-direction and autonomy which is nearly unparalleled. This special issue draws together several areas of personal mobility for people with disabilities. This issue includes papers related to wheelchair design and analysis, analysis of personal transportation designed for wheelchair users, factors influencing secondary disability, and evaluation of accessible environments. The common theme is the goal of providing maximum independent mobility to the widest possible range of environments over a lifetime free from a debilitating secondary disability. We hope that people will gain from this effort and will be motivated to continue or expand research into wheeled mobility. Publisher Item Identifier S 1063-6528(96)07475-7 A great number of people were involved in making this issue possible. We would like to thank D. Chesney and P. Stankovic for helping to process the reviews, H. F. Machiel Van der Loos, Ph.D., who helped to edit and process the reviews of several of the manuscripts, and R. Robinson who helped us pull the issue together. We would also like to thank the reviewers who worked very hard to give us timely and accurate reviews of each manuscript. Their work has improved the manuscripts and this special issue. This issue presents some very important advancements made in mobility research over the past decade. We hope that progress will continue at a rapid pace and that people with disabilities will continue to benefit from this important research.