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Wheelchair Resources

t can be extremely overwhelming to need/begin using a wheelchair. Resources and advice from disabled people can be hard to find. Here is a collection of helpful links and mini-essays from people with lived experience!

please feel free to reblog and add your own links and advice

Masterposts are the best. Check out these links, the comments, and our Wheelchair Tag for even more!

Badge idea:

cool disability psa!

hi everyone!  so while the term “handicapped” is really outdated/problematic & we don’t use it to discuss pwd anymore, i still hear good, woke people use it to refer to parking spots/toilets/etc.  like “the handicapped stall” or whatever.  and i really think they do that bc they don’t know of a better term.  so i’m gonna give you one!  “accessible!!!!”

any time you’d say “handicapped,” say “accessible”

“oh, he has fibromyalgia, so he has an accessible parking permit” “due to her spinal cord injury, she has an accessible dorm room” etc etc

this is cool for two main reasons! 1 - you’re not using super outdated language  and 2 - it puts the focus on the accessibility of the environment, not the personal impairment, which if you’ve done any reading on the social model of disability, you’ll know is a really good thing.

so spread the word, practice better disability politics, and spare me the inward cringe every time i have to hear the word “handicapped”

abled people: actually my sweet little beloved tiny baby boy brother has the autism so i think i know more about disability than you, a mere disabled person

Another abled person: Um, excuse me sweety but you can’t call yourself d*s*bl*d is it’s a slur you should say you’re a person suffering from severe high functioning specially different abilities. My two year old sixth cousin thrice removed suffers from the same specialness as you so clearly I’m an expert :):):):)

Another abled person: hey I once had the flu for a week/had my foot in a cast so I totally know more about being bedridden or having a mobility impairment than you, a permanently disabled person with a painful chronic illness!

Disabled people shouldn’t have to live in fear of using wheelchairs and mobility aids part time just because abled people don’t have the basic understanding to realise that disability can fluctuate from day to day.

being a cane user at 20 creates some interesting dynamics with old people I see while out and about. I either get a sort of vibe of solidarity with elderly people using mobility devices, or it’s complete and utter scorn.

I totally get this. I'm 30 but people tend to guess that I'm much younger, and I've gotten looks from elderly people like they think I'm using my cane as a fashion statement or like I'm encroaching on their turf or something. Not that I would literally fall over or be largely housebound if I didn't have it -_-

But then another time, I was out and about and ran into this older guy who had the exact same cane as me, one of the snazzy fold-up ones and in the exact same color & pattern, and he was like "Cane twins!" And we got chatting about where we bought our canes and our various needs for using them and it was just delightful.

This welcome mat converts into a fully accessible wheelchair ramp. Beautiful and functional design. I want it.

Some more info, for people who are interested.

First of all, I can’t believe this has almost 3,000 notes. I’m so glad that people are sharing this - both as a cool design, and also as an important accessibility feature.

Thanks to pseudosoph for linking to additional info (above) regarding weight limits, lift height, and product background – the creator is a wheelchair user himself! Very cool stuff. Keep sharing!

theres something incredibly touching to me about a ramp that literally says “welcome” on it

@jezunya this seems relevant to your interests

to be visibly disabled in public is to be made a spectacle. it is to be put on stage without your consent. it is the uneasy feeling of eyes following you without a thought to your humanity not because of anything inherent to disability, but because of an ableist culture that insidiously teaches that we are zoo animals

If you ever fall in public:

Pick yourself up, laugh and say “Sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body” Move on

I never run voluntarily so if you see me running you should start running too because something is coming. 

wheelchair sapphic moodboard

[Caption: the nine pictures are: a shirt with the international symbol of access in rainbow colors, a woman smiling and posing for the camera on their wheelchair, an elderly couple dressed in fancy pastel clothes in their wheelchairs, a woman with her wheelchair on a bridge smiling at the camera, 

a picture of a solitary wheelchair, a picture of Frida Kahlo painting while on her chair, two elderly women sitting with their wheelchairs in the ocean, a wheelchair user wearing ballet clothes, and the international symbol of access.]

No Cane, No Gain Shirts

I would like to propose a new term

disability parkour- compound noun, /dɪsəˈbɪlɪti/ /pɑɹˈkʊɹ/  1. The method by which physically disabled people who don’t have their mobility aid navigate their environment, including leaning on things, sitting down on things, asking pedestrians for help, and so on. 2. General- the ways in which all disabled people navigate an environment that is unfriendly for them. 

If you do a particularly skilful feat of disability parkour, post it in the #disability parkour tag so I can cheer you on. :)