The IBOT is Dead!

[Wetzel]

Living in central London, I can't even imagine life in a wheelchair. THREE of the about 50 tube stations in zones 1 and 2 are wheelchair accessible. Things were not built to be wheelchair friendly, with many buildings a few hundred years old. Retrofits are often roundabout and tricky to find, though I imagine things are a lot better than 10 years ago when the IBOT was first released. I was just on crutches for a while, and stairs where tricky and I avoided them when I could. They surprisingly hard to avoid, and going around was often a LONG way around.

Spend a day not using any step over 6 inches, not even in a wheelchair, and you will get a bit of an idea how different life would be.

Wetzel

[ATannahill]

I once sprained my ankle and had to use elevators for weeks. Although it was not close to being comparable to a being in a wheelchair, I discovered that, without stairs, life is hard. I discovered that the only times I went to my locker, I used stairs to get there and then I used them again to go back to where I started. I also realized how hard it was to attend a regional without using stairs.

[JaneYoung]

In the area of Austin where I live and drive through during the week, to and from work, it doesn't take long to see the crying need for better and improved motorized scooters and wheelchairs for the people who use them to get where they are going. The wheelchairs are the worst by far. People use them because it is what they have, what they can afford, what they know to be available. Every day, I think about the wonders of the iBOT and how even a portion of that quality, technological whizardry, and robustness could benefit these folks who depend on the chairs and scooters for some quality of life each day.