Who Are They?
ASU Graduate students Peter Georgiou and Chris Miranda teamed up last fall to create “UP,” an elevating wheelchair designed to simplify life for people with disabilities. After graduating in 2013, the team still continues meeting weekly to design a second prototype from scratch. Key features of this new product include being affordable and light weight.
After talking to people with disabilities and roaming around the campus in a wheelchair to gain better understanding of their life, the students noticed that vending machines, bar counters and other places can be located too high for people in wheelchairs, whose height is about two feet lower than people who are standing.
The Project
The new innovation aims to solve a social problem of inequity that occurs because of the difference in the height between disabled and able-bodied persons. A person in a wheelchair can easily elevate the height of the wheelchair to have comfortable eye contact during a face-to-face interaction with a standing able-bodied person. This gives disabled people the opportunity to have greater mobility and freedom to be able to have an active lifestyle.
The elevated chair aims to increase the elevation of the user by ten inches, allowing people with disabilities to choose the height they need according to the place or situation taking place. The purpose of said chair is important and easy to understand: simplify life for people with disabilities by gaining independence and re-establish a sense of normalcy.
More on the Team
The entire team is known as “pacr,” which is the first letter of each member of said team. Unity is signified, as well as the fact that great things can come from the collaboration of unique viewpoints and perspective.
What are your thoughts on this new type of chair? Do you think UP will help breakdown even more barriers between those in wheelchairs and those who are not?
