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Some California soldiers wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are getting much more than a purple heart. They're also getting some new wheels.
They'll now be riding around in an iBOT wheelchair. It's made by the same guy who makes Segways. It's like most powered wheelchairs except it can climb stairs, travel through thick terrain, and best of all, rise up on two wheels.
"Why couldn't we use the 21st century that we use to make auto pilot and gyro stabilized equipment, put it in a device to help a disabled person regain the capability to stand up, look people in the eye and essentially be able to walk around, go up and down stairs and have their independence back, and we did it," says iBOT designer Dean Kamen.
The iBOT costs $26,000 each. But they were free for the veterans since the money was donated by a group of California business owners.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From WIFR:
