The family of an 11-year-old girl with cerebral palsy has accused the Blackpool Transport tram company of abandoning her on a day out after they refused to carry her wheelchair back from the seafront.
Has the whole darn world gone bonkers??
Some tantalizing futurespeak, via Engadget:
“According to associate professor John Spletzer, the recipient of a five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, the goal is to ‘extend the autonomy of the wheelchair so it can navigate completely in an urban setting and take you wherever you need to go.’ This will be done by equipping robotic chairs with laser and camera sensors (which the team developed for the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge) as well as exhaustive, Google Street View-esque maps of the city where they will be operating. Of course, these guys will be operating in a busy urban environment, so in addition to large-scale 3D maps, they must be equipped with motion planning features for operating in dense crowds and a changing environment.”
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Read Irked posts tagged “wheelchair”
Read Irked posts tagged “technology”
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We’re very, very intrigued by inclusive travel consultant Craig Grimes‘ Barcelona-based first installments of the YouTube video series “Lap Packing.” We truly hope he continues to make them!
Check out parts 1 and 2 of Lap Packing now:
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Then…
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Quoting BBC News:
“A blind man has piloted a £3m passenger catamaran across the Solent to raise awareness for stem cell research, which could one day help restore sight. Colin McArthur, whose blindness is caused by a genetic condition, took the controls for the hour-long return trip. The father-of-five from Sandown, Isle of Wight, said he “enjoyed every minute” of the experience. It marks the launch of a project by the University of Southampton to find a cure for inherited blindness. Mr McArthur, 58, previously flew a Britten-Norman Islander plane and piloted a 130-seat hovercraft to raise awareness of retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited condition which causes blindness, often in later life. He wants to raise money for the research project, which is trying to discover whether stem-cells from the iris and cornea can be re-grown in the retina to restore the sight of people with retinitis pigmentosa. Mr McArthur, who is a trustee of charity RP Fighting Blindness, said: “Luckily enough the captain guided me through and told me which way to steer and how fast to go.” The Wight Link ferry, with passengers onboard, left Ryde, Isle of Wight on Thursday at 10:45 BST bound for Portsmouth and returned at 11:15 BST.”
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(& click here to add it to your RSS feed reader, eh.)
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Quoting Matthew Burrows, writing for straight.com:
“Vancouverites can be forgiven if they believe this is a great city for people with disabilities. After all, quadriplegic former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan and paraplegic athlete Rick Hansen are known around the world for their achievements. In addition, Vancouver—the largest city in a province that Premier Gordon Campbell has proclaimed the Best Place on Earth—is hosting the Paralympics in March. Talk to University of Victoria social-policy professor Michael Prince, however, and he’ll tell you he rolls his eyes “a little bit” at the boosterism. [October 22 marked] the launch of his book Absent Citizens: Disability Politics and Policy in Canada
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Then…
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Permalink / Comments
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Dear Caitlin “Lulu” Wood and Toshio Meronek,
Keep up the G-R-E-A-T work! Your website, www.whereslulu.com, is truly phenomenal. But please add more cities to your database, because we neither live in Portland nor San Francisco…
We hear Boston and New York are “coming soon.” Can you add some rockin’ Canadian cities to your site, too! Add Halifax! Add Montreal! Add Toronto and Vancouver and Ottawa and Calgary and Saskatoon and Victoria and St. John’s and Charlottetown and Miramichi and Whitehorse and Winnipeg and and and…
Keep growin’.
Sincerely and gratefully yours,
Irked Magazine
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Congratulations to Chris Waddell & the One-Revolution team on a successful summit of Mount Kilimanjaro!!!! At 19,340 feet, Kilimanjaro is the tallest mountain in Africa and the tallest freestanding mountain in the world. Waddell has just become the FIRST paraplegic to summit the mountain, using the appropriately named Bomba (pictured above)—a one-of-a-kind, 4-wheel handcycle propelled entirely be arm power.
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Watch this recent CBS News segment, shot before Waddell reached the top:
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Many, many, MANY hats off to Jeff Preston for making this truly fantastic online documentary chronicling the lack of accessible transportation in London, Ontario and across the province. Follow Jeff on his mission to bring about change the disabled population desperately needs by driving his wheelchair over 650km from his home in London, Ontario to the nation’s capital in Ottawa.
Until recently, wheelchairs couldn’t provide access to nature’s most beautiful spots. Parks and beaches . . . sand, gravel, lightly-packed snow . . . oceanside, lakeside, national parks, cobbled botanical gardens. The Landeez all-terrain wheelchair promises to change all that. Ideal for traveling by car, it can be disassembled and placed in the trunk in seconds after removing two pins in the rear wheels. The sporty Landeez can be equipped with optional accessories that make using it more enjoyable in the great outdoors, including a colorful beach umbrella, a reading stand, a handy drink holder, and a latch for binoculars.
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