A database of news and information about people with disabilities and disability issues...
Copyright statement: Unless otherwise stated, all posts on this blog continue to be the property of the original author/publication/Web site, which can be found via the link at the beginning of each post.
A disabled Japanese adventurer says he is planning to leave his wheelchair behind and walk up a medieval French World Heritage site next year with the help of a cutting-edge robotic suit (pictured).
Seiji Uchida, 48, who lost the ability to walk in a car accident 27 years ago, said he has long dreamed of visiting the picturesque abbey of Mont Saint-Michel, set on a rocky islet in Normandy.
Now, in a challenge planned for next summer, he aims to do so with the help of a robot suit, called the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL), which works like an exoskeleton and amplifies the muscle power of its wearer's legs.
Battery-powered HAL - designed to help the elderly with mobility and manual work and to assist hospital carers in lifting patients - detects muscle impulses to anticipate and support the user's body movements.
A full-body model of HAL, being developed by Tsukuba University professor Yoshiyuki Sankai, assists both arms and legs, and allows users to carry a load of up to 70kg with one arm.
Uchida and a support team used an earlier version of the suit in an unsuccessful attempt to conquer the 4164m Breithorn peak in Switzerland in 2006, when climbers wearing the robo-suits carried Uchida.
Uchida says he wants to visit the rocky tidal island of Mont Saint-Michel, where a steep and narrow trail leads to an abbey and former fortress, to "prove that it is possible for disabled people to visit the world's historic sites without relying on facilities like elevators," he said.
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 AFP:
