Mobility Impaired People Research Articles

Self-Claiming Sexuality: Mobility Impaired People and American Culture

This paper reports on a small piece of the research I recently conducted on how people with mobility impairments self-interpret and self-claim their sexuality in light of cultural assumptions which largely desexualize them. I will first offer a quick overview of the larger project. Then, I will discuss the manner by which dominant cultural notions of sexuality and disability are—at times—simultaneously challenged and reinforced by participants as they self-claim their respective sexualities.

Pathology Quiz

Fall is one of the leading causes of fatal and nonfatal injuries in older adults. Fall may lead to different kinds of harms such as physical and cognitive problems, psychological impairments or even death. More than 30% of older adults aged 65 and above experience fall every year. As people age, their ability in maintaining balance reduces, causing an increase in the incidence of fall. There are many prevention strategies and interventions presented to minimize the incidence of fall over the last decades in terms of exercising, improving fall-related knowledge, modifying home facilities, and assistive devices. This chapter presents a review of mobility-assistive devices including canes, wheelchairs, exoskeletons, and walkers for mobility-impaired people. In particular, the chapter also focuses on smart walking devices and highlights their features and subsystems with the aim to investigate their limitations.

High-quality television links for home-based support for the elderly.

Since 1991, 17 elderly people have been connected via a broadband video communication system to a telecare centre. The new services used videophones based on domestic television sets, including set-top boxes with cameras and a microphone. The services had the overall aim of promoting the ability of elderly and mobility-impaired people to live independently and to reduce the demand on social service resources required to implement this. Service components included: remote response to emergencies; active information and care; information and assistance service; remote care on demand; remote access to expertise (counselling); training and exercise service; and support for carers. Some 14,000 calls have been made. The important qualitative aspects were: clients' satisfaction; replacement of direct social contacts; privacy and data protection; and improving the effectiveness of social services. For a successful market implementation of video-based social support and telecare services, it is essential to integrate them into existing outpatient services.

The vital role of street design and management in reducing barriers to older peoples' mobility

Travel encompasses a much wider environment than a journey by a person in a vehicle, thus actual travel takes place within the ‘travel environment’. Travel is very complex but it can be subdivided into three broad components: the person; the vehicle; and the built environment. Travel can only be carried out if the three components are linked by means of a ‘travel chain’ and a journey cannot be made effectively if all the links are not efficiently joined. For many mobility-impaired people the ‘travel chain’ is negated by ‘built environment barriers’. Travel is interdisciplinary and only an interdisciplinary approach can reduce barriers and increase mobility. Thus this paper is interdisciplinary in its approach to a major transport problem — the ‘unfriendly street’. Accessible buses are starting to come into operation in the United Kingdom and expectations are high that the travel of older people will increase because of these buses. The authors use recent research to challenge this belief and argue that there will be little increase in travel by older people owing to present low patronage and built environment barriers. The authors then identify major barriers to travel which make streets very unfriendly and itemize 18 barriers to access which can be removed by good design. Design parameters are presented to overcome the major problem of unfriendly surfaces in paved areas and the paper concludes by reiterating that travel for older people can only be increased by an interdiscipline approach which links ‘friendly buses’ with ‘friendly streets’.

Mobility Impairment and Pharmacy Accessibility

Architectural and environmental barriers have gained increasing attention in recent years as part of efforts to improve the accessibility of the environment for mobility-impaired people of all ages. The issue of equity is of significant concern in many of these situations because a choice must be made about the cost that people, businesses, and governments must bear to eliminate barriers and improve access. Equitable solutions can be achieved in some situations, but in others difficult long-term conflicts can arise naturally when intrinsically incompatible demands are placed on a single environment by two or more groups. This is shown to be true of the commercial pharmacy environment of Austin, Texas, where effective marketing techniques sometimes create barriers that limit access. This conflict cannot be readily resolved because although these commercial barriers can be eliminated, their removal could affect the long-term profitability of the pharmacies. In these situations, it may be important to accept the irresolvable nature of the conflicts and attempt, instead, to alleviate the isolation faced by mobility-impaired populations if they withdraw from commercial built environments due to barriers.