Urban fantasy wheelchair features?

[illuminist]

Hi folks! I'm brainstorming a paraplegic character (gunshot wound in the past) in an urban fantasy setting. The tech level is modern (smartphones, wifi, etc) and the character has terrakinesis abilities: mentally lifting rocks, shaping and warping metal, transmuting one substance to another.

Do you have any ideas on what features would be cool to have in a fantasy wheelchair? Currently I'm thinking of a floating office chair that responds to mental commands, but I'd love to hear suggestions. Thanks!

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

I see your account is freshly created, perhaps for the purpose of using this comm; welcome to Dreamwidth, and I hope you find what you’re looking for!

Some of it will depend on your character’s degree of disability: I presume this was a spinal cord injury? What level?

You describe the tech level as “modern”, but present-day communities differ wildly in their accessibility. How accommodating is your character’s community as far as things like ramps, restroom space, doorbell and elevator button altitude, and motion-sensitive doors?

I’m not qualified—yet—but actual wheelchair users have first dibs on this one: what’d be your wishlist?

[hitokage]

Top of mind: something that shocks the hell out of random unauthorized persons just grabbing the chair (or some other effective deterrent/badge of dishonor)

[full_metal_ox]

Amen. Not exactly the same range of experience, but I’ve frequently had Good Samaritan ambushers yank my granny cart from my grasp in an attempt to help—excuse me, that’s serving in part as a balancing aid!

[bee]

On this same vein: Spikes on the back that keep people from touching or even approaching from behind! Also some kind of alarm system that keeps people from fucking touching it while the person is out of the chair. I frequently prefer to 'park' and move to a seat when I'm sitting in one place, as I only need my chair because I can't walk or stand for more than a minute or so and you can't rely on there being a public bench around these days.

Echoing someone further down this thread, storage that cannot be reached by anyone but me. Bags or pockets down to either side of the seat on the inside, where I can keep my usual bag contents. Also, since this is fantasy, some way to push carts, strollers etc while being in a chair. This is a real life problem and I've only seen ONE wheelchair that allowed a wheelchair user to push their baby in a stroller that faced them! That's so important! But critically, I want to be able to push a full-sized shopping cart while using a wheelchair! None of this tiny little cart nonsense, as though I use less groceries than a normal person!

Also, rain shelter. If it's this kind of setting, why not have the wheelchair double as a regular form of transport? I've often thought it would be so easy if my wheelchair could smoothly transform into my minivan!

Have you done any looking around about what variety there already is in wheelchairs? There's the GRIT, there's dancing and other sport wheelchairs, and handcycles, and standing chairs, and all kinds of things. But aside from the actual chair itself, have you considered what the world does FOR chair users? For example, I avoid flying bc those aisles are so narrow and I don't like how they force you to put your wheelchair in cargo where they will freely break the shit out of it and not care.

It's all well and good to design a cool chair that does cool things, but like 99% of my problems come from the fact that society just does not design itself around people that need to sit down and do that (whatever 'that' is). The stairs or escalator are right there, the elevator or ramp is miles away. It makes us have to tire ourselves out because we're travelling two or three times as much distance than using the stairs would be. It feels like punishment. And it's especially insulting when you consider we often don't have as much energy as walkers, even when we have a chair, so making us go that far severely limits whether we can do whatever we're trying to get over there to do. So... more than just the chair, think about what the world looks like for someone in a chair, in your world.

[armiphlage]

A chainsaw to destroy advertising signs blocking the sidewalk.

[alias_sqbr]

I have only used power chairs for fatigue, so my needs are different, take all this with a big grain of salt:

Storage, either directly incorporated or at least easily added. Searching for "wheelchair bag" shows how people do this with typical manual wheelchairs.

Portability, even someone with telekinesis is going to take cars/planes sometimes. Just looked up 'portable office chair' and that does seem to be an option, this one comes with a cool box https://cozyroadie.com/ Though maybe telekinesis can make any chair foldable :)

Comfortable for extended sitting to avoid pressure sores. Not sure if a typical high end office chair suits this, maybe!

Foot rests, for me this is more about fatigue/comfort but I think paraplegic people have to be careful their legs don't move about unexpectedly. A typical office chair lacks this but I came across a chair designed specifically for disabled people which might be worth a look https://www.grayingwithgrace.com/vela-independence-mobility-chair-review/.

Floating gets around issues with getting over stairs and other obstacles and difficult surfaces, and also presumably offers automatic adjustable height.

Small footprint so you're not banging into stuff when you move about and turn. An office chair suits this.

If there's any risk of "power" failure, can your character still move around unaided? Can they move around aided by another person?

Reclining. For fatigue this is mostly just about taking naps, I think for paraplegia it's about avoiding pressure sores and making it easier to get in and out. "Tilt-in-Space Recline" seems to be the term to look into for paraplegia. I guess this comes with telekinesis too.

My understanding is that most otherwise independent paraplegic people want low backrests and small/no/moveable arm rests, for more flexibility of movement. This seems especially useful if they can like... float the chair up next to something like a bed or toilet and move themselves across.

[magid]

A wheelchair-using friend made one that held him standing up, so he could use woodshop tools. Not sure your character would need this, if floating is possible.

[azurelunatic]

Sometimes you have problems getting close enough to something that's not built for seated access, like sinks. So changing position even if it's midair is still useful.

[full_metal_ox]

Further important question: how public can your character be in the use of their terrakinesis?

[azurelunatic]

I'm also a fatigue-and-pain occasional power chair / motorized grocery cart user, and one of the petty problems I have is skirt management. I have to be careful that my long skirts don't get variously fouled in the wheels or drag on the floor. A floating chair would eliminate the wheel problem, but depending on the height at the moment, if your character has dramatic sweeping or floaty clothing, it would be useful to have something that would keep any trailing ends from getting dirty on the floor/ground, and from catching on any obstacles. While still looking cool.

Storage space, and an easy way to get stuff out of there. (Sounds easy enough with terrakinesis, you could have metal that opens at will but is otherwise sealed, and your character can form a custom grabber out of the metal to hold the object in the exact correct place. Which might wind up looking a little bit Doc Ock?;) ) It's up to you whether you want to have the storage space accessible by anyone other than your character - if it's not, what happens if something important is in there while your character is knocked out or asleep; if it is accessible, would theft be a problem in that circumstance?

Custom colors/patterns, of course - some wheelchair users like to put stickers on, I got my power chair used and it's not the color I would have picked, and I repainted my first rollator. Light-up bits would be cool, depending on personality.

If your character is picking an office chair out of commercially available office chairs, they may wind up completely replacing the cushions with something custom, due to what alias_sqbr mentioned -- pressure sores and related ergonomics are definitely an issue for paraplegia, and IRL wheelchair users have died of injuries related to sitting in an unsuitable chair for extended periods of time. (I'm thinking about a specific case of someone whose power chair was destroyed by an airline and she was abandoned for hours in an airport transport chair without regard to her specific limb situation.) So a cool feature would be some kind of anti pressure sore / DVT motion, which could be powered by active terrakinesis but for their health ought to be something automatic built into the chair, so they won't accidentally forget it and have their health suffer for it. But office chair wise, you probably would not want an office chair rated for less than 18 hours' sitting, and at that point you're getting close to wheelchair budget. But with an active community of terrakinetics, there are probably like message boards based around materials hacking, and your character might devote a year or two of their previous life to extensively customizing their chair with input from their medical team.

[biofreak659]

What about some sort of magnetic (or magic magnets, ley-lines?) wheelchair line, similar to the raised dot walkways for blind people?

And the character in the wheelchair, who I'm assuming has some sort of telekinetic ability, could have limited off-road capabilities via telekinesis?

A combination of both infrastructure and personal ability would be interesting to work with in writing, and you could do a lot of world building with it.

[melannen]

Ideally, the goal of a wheelchair is to make the user able to access as much infrastructure designed for walkers as possible. That means the priorities are less things like flying and going fast and looking cool and having bells and whistles, and more things like fitting into small spaces, climbing stairs, all-terrain, being able to reach things, get in and out easily (and get in and out of vehicles), making sure people only touch the chair if you want them to, comfortable, reliable and simple to maintain, etc.

I'd start by looking at the top-of-the-line personal chairs currently used by paraplegics and think about what your magic could to do make them more useful. Those chairs are already pretty optimized from what I understand - but you can probably find blog posts from users with pie-in-the-sky wishlists for improvements. It's also going to depend on the rules of your magic - for example, many people might still prefer a lightweight and simple manual chair to a carven oak magic chair that does everything but is useless if you don't get it to the druid for a tuneup and recharge every week.

Also, what are the limits of your character's power? If they can move metal around with their minds, and don't have a limit on how much they can do it, they might actually do better with just some simple metal braces that they can use to control their lower body (and perhaps a basic manual chair for at home.)