A new kitchen product designed to allow wheelchair users to use the kitchen independently — Scope | Disability forum
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A new kitchen product designed to allow wheelchair users to use the kitchen independently

louisf7
louisf7 Community member Posts: 2 Listener

Hi my name is Louis and I’m a current 3rd year Product design and manufacture student at Nottingham University. I am currently working on a project to change the way wheelchair users carry out tasks in the kitchen and to enable them to cook independently. I am posting looking to gain an insight into the daily struggles wheelchair users face when it comes to cooking. If you have any suggestions or modifications to current kitchens or kitchen products that you have carried out or problems that you face daily that you would like to be eradicated I would love to hear them. In particular if there are any tasks, i.e cooking on a hob, that are especially troublesome and if you have any suggestions to counteract this.

The information gathered in this post will be used to inform and develop a new kitchen product design that will change the way wheelchair users are able to cook and to improve everyday life. All information that I do gather will remain anonymous and will remain confidential

Comments

  • newborn
    newborn Community member Posts: 832 Pioneering
    Its good students ask, good they remember disability exists, but not good if they have a notion that someone will do their homework, not good they can be so unwoke they think all those millions of disabled people have been waiting for someone of their unique skill to come and solve their benighted lives for them. 

      Do your own  exhaustive research on existing best practice adapted kitchens. At disability road shows there are often amazing exhibits.    There is not, not, not any one size fits all gadget or adaptation.   

     Friends were horrified when the know it all council forced a tenant, against her will, to have her kitchen 'adapted'.  From that day, she could no longer look after her family.    The workmen had ripped out all the base cupboards "so you can get your chair under the worktop".    To do what?    Now she cannot reach a single item of food or equipment, from her seated position.  She used to keep nearly everything in the base cupboards, so she could access it.    She used a makeshift board over her lap as a substitute worktop. Not perfect, but she managed fine..

    One wheelie will have a weak arm, another a poor grip.  One will be left handed, another will be unable to twist and turn.    And so on.   The main source of truly useful invention is when engineers or diy aces need to make something for themselves or an immediate family member.    They know what the problem is, for that single person.   Outsiders coming up with proposed solutions to hypothetical imagined problems are extremely unlikely to devise anything much use to  anyone.

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