Custom wheelchair footrest
Our client has a condition that requires their feet to be elevated when sitting, which means that the footrest on their wheelchair is not high enough, even in its maximum raised position. This challenge is also compounded by their short stature.
Footrest height
They work as a research scientist and use a sophisticated wheelchair for both day to day work and professional meetings. The footrest solution that they had been able to make at home consisted of a series of packaging foam blocks covered with gaffer tape, which had to be regularly replaced and often fell off the wheelchair frame:
Home made footrest spacer
What they wanted was a custom-made foot platform that was the right height, insulated from cold, adjustable for angle to ensure that it stayed horizontal, and that looked as good as the rest of their wheelchair.
The Challenge
The client had clear requirements for the new wheelchair footrest, and was clearly looking for something that was the opposite of the home-made solutions that had been used to date. Initial work focussed on a simple platform bolted to the existing frame with an insulated foam rubber covering, but this proved impossible to obtain in very small quantities.
The work then shifted to a design based on a sheet metal base tray, clamped to the wheelchair frame, which used inexpensive snap fittings to attach a top plastic footplate. These fixings insulated the top plate from the metal tray and also enabled the tray to be fitted with a two-way spirit level. This met the client’s need to set the footrest perfectly horizontally, and was very inexpensive to add:
Wheelchair footrest base plate
The solution
The completed solution was made possible by a small sheet metal fabrication workshop in Andover (Hurstbourne Forge) who have laser cutting, bending and powder coating facilities. What makes them unusual is that they are happy to make one-off parts at a reasonable cost. This enabled the finished solution to look manufactured, which is what the client was looking for:
Completed footrest
The final part of the job was the addition of grip tape to the footplate to ensure safe use during the winter months:
Wheelchair footrest with grip tape
The benefit
The main benefit to the client was that they had a wheelchair that met both their physical needs, in terms of elevating their feet to the right level, but also their social and professional needs, in terms of using a wheelchair that did not need a block of foam covered in gaffer tape to make it work.
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