Wheelchair is designed to aid movement for a mobility-impaired person.
This innovative inception of a new mobility aid greatly eased the life of people who were waiting on attendants to move from place to place.
These wheelchairs turned the lives of immobile people into a brisk life of activity.
An overall survey of the various types of wheelchairs that are available will help people to match their budget with their requirement.
The early wheelchair was manual and simple to operate.
A structure, instead of legs, supports a chair to which two load-bearing wheels, similar to bicycle wheels are attached.
A hand rim is fixed to this for the user to move the wheel facilitating the movement.
To keep the wheelchair stable, one or two smaller, extra wheels are attached.
If the user is too weak to push the hand-rim to move wheelchair, an attendant can push him through, with the help of two handles fixed to the back of the chair.
Based on this pattern several variants are developed to suit the specific needs of various users.
Powered wheelchairs are with batteries to power an electric motor that runs the wheels controlled by the user with the help of joysticks.
The batteries are charged periodically depending upon the power sustainability and the electric consumption of the motor.
Automated wheel chairs are with sensors that senses the obstacles on the path and changes track accordingly.
If the user is weak to handle the joysticks he could opt for push buttons for controls.
Brain controlled wheelchairs are the latest version which is meant for people with acute mobility problem.
They can control the movement by impulses created in the brain.
These wheelchairs are quite expensive but convenient for extreme cases.
Great variants started to come to satisfy every demand of mobility-impaired persons like sports wheel-chairs for entertainment, terrain wheelchairs for adventure, transport wheelchairs for business and daily errands, child wheelchair for children and pet wheelchairs for mobility-impaired pets.
All these chairs are the developed variant of the basic model with or without power, for the movement.
Some tailor made versions are there to equip people of specific disorder like paraplegic cases for whom the attack of paralysis would have immobilized their lower portion of the body below waist.
Standing and staircase climbing wheel chairs are other variants in this list.
Thus, wheelchairs have revolutionized the lives of mobility-impaired people giving active involvement in society.