Wheelchair Accessibility   

Wheelchair accessibility is vital to a disabled person to achieve the best experierience when visiting country houses, National Trust properties or English Heritage sites. 

There aren't many vehicles that can go backwards down stairs. You'd look pretty impressive on a bicycle, let alone a wheelchair. But the Whirlwind RoughRider, which is on show in a new exhibition at the Science Museum, not only makes riders look impressive but helps them become more sociable - they longer have to worry about getting stuck in potholes or gutters, and can concentrate on their friends and family. We, at Access4All, we are reliably informed that their information is accurate.  

The wheelchair was accessible from the kiosk at a National Trust property and a member of staff was only too willing to explain the basic rudiments of the wheelchair. They advised on the correct procedures for drive, both forward and reverse. The staff gave a 5 minute explanation of the controls but would have taken longer if required. We could not fault the valuable instruction session. Unfortunately, no demonstration of how to take the wheelchair down stairs, forwards or backwards! 

The RoughRider is made by and for those in developing countries that may not have adequate infrastructure. Conventional wheelchairs, in countries without solid roads and pavements, tend to last no more than a year, but the RoughRider can negotiate all manner of terrain: sand, mud, and unmended roads. Chairs are built using local labour and materials. 

Whirlwind Wheelchair International, part of the San Francisco State University (SFSU) charitable foundation and funded by donations and government grants, has been designing chairs since 1989. Ralf Hotchkiss, the chief engineer, is himself paraplegic and was inspired after his own wheelchair broke after leaving hospital. 

The reason the chair won't pitch the user out at the first tree root it encounters is in the design and structure of the wheels. Marc Krizack, director of operations at Whirlwind, explains: "On a standard wheelchair you have a very short wheelbase. When you hit a bump, even a relatively small bump, it makes the chair want to tip forward. Injuries caused by tipping forward out of a wheelchair are the biggest cause of injury to wheelchair users." As the front castors want to drive into the ground, lessening the weight on them makes them more stable. 

The front castors themselves are different – they are much wider and, counter-intuitively, have flexibility around the edges. "When you are on a hard surface you run on the centre of the wheel, so there's very little friction," says Krizack. "When you are going through mud and grass you can really see the difference." 

As the chairs are so different, new users need to be trained in using them. Hence every RoughRider comes with a user manual, also translated into Spanish, Vietnamese or Arabic. "Even people who have used standard chairs for years need to learn," says Krizack. 

This training is carried out in local wheelchair shops and factories. Another aim of Whirlwind is to create jobs in developing countries where the wheelchairs are needed. 

The organization acts as a hub for disability groups and manufacturers across the world. It doesn't manufacture chairs in the US, although the foundation does offer building courses through SFSU. Spare parts, difficult to come by for conventional chairs, can be easily found for the Whirlwind chairs and in many cases improvised. 

Centres for building chairs are in 45 countries, including Vietnam, Malawi and Azerbaijan. There are even tentative moves to make them available in Iraq. Krizack says: "Right now we're just trying to get some chairs imported there without anybody getting killed." 

The design of the chairs is primarily user-led, and needs differ from country to country, making for some interesting variation. Peter Pfaelzer, co-founder of Whirlwind and engineering professor at SFSU, writes: "As an example, extremely narrow bathroom and elevator doors in Russia gave rise to the Siberian wheelchair frame which can be narrowed by the rider while sitting in the chair. 

"Cultural factors can also affect wheelchair design. In many countries in the Near East and Asia, for instance, much social activity, including cooking and eating, occurs at floor level. Wheelchairs in these settings must be designed to allow the rider to participate in these activities." Some of these regional variations Krizack hopes to standardize. 

The designs before the RoughRider were initially intended to be public domain - free for manufacturers to use, or develop under scrutiny. Hotchkiss deliberately did not patent them. But while this openness allowed freedom of development and movement of ideas, it started putting some countries' shops in jeopardy. 

This was a particularly troubling development, as the shops are often used as community and information centers for disabled people. "We are not necessarily interested in the wheelchair," says Krizack. "We are interested in getting people who are disabled actively involved in their society through small wheelchair shops." 

These wheelchairs are being trilled at several National Trust properties but with a unit cost of over £4000, it will be some time before the complete National Trust estate has sufficient funds to install a Rough Rider at all properties. 

The foundation hopes it can generate income through increasing production in some places such as in South Africa and India, and supporting smaller shops elsewhere to do repairs, maintenance and fitting.  

"We will go way back if we don't deal with the effects of globalization," says Krizack, "We are trying to get the best of globalization and avoid the worst." 

· For more information on Whirlwind Wheelchair International, visit their site whirlwindwheelchair.org. The RoughRider wheelchair is on show now as part of the Science of Survival exhibition, at the Science Museum, London