Accessible Living Blog

Deep Sea Wheelchair Diving

• By dwaldman
• April 29, 2014
• No Comments

The title of this article is not a typo: deep sea wheelchair diving really does exist! Performance artist Sue Austin has developed an underwater wheelchair which she uses during filmed deep sea diving performances. In a TEDxWomen talk she discussed her motivation behind the design of the underwater wheelchair in order to change perceptions of people using wheelchairs.

One of the most interesting points she discussed was the feeling she first received when she began using her power chair. She felt a great sense of freedom, but she also felt that many people were feeling pity for her using a wheelchair. In order to change public perception on wheelchairs, the underwater wheelchair was born. Showing a wheelchair in a different context allows others to understand the freedom that a wheelchair gives a person with a mobility disability. A scuba system is used by people to navigate an environment freely, much in the same way that a wheelchair does, but it does not carry the same social stigma.

At the Anderson Center and Maximum Accessible Housing of Ohio our goal is to help people with physical mobility disabilities live as free and independently as they can. All people regardless of abilities should be able to live where they want to and be free from barriers. Our Vistas apartment communities are designed for independent living and we treat our tenants as any other apartment manager would. The only difference between our apartments and the majority of other apartments, is that all of our apartments are designed for full accessibility.

The goal of the Anderson Center is create awareness and educate the public on accessible design. The amount of accessible housing that is currently available does not meet the current demand and new accessible housing is not being created quickly enough to meet future demand either. An individual should feel free in their home and many of our tenants say when they get settled into their new apartments how for the first time in their lives they feel independent. Accessible design and accessibility devices aren’t well understood by the general public, but they provide the freedom for many people to live life on their own terms.