The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Abilee Kellett is the daughter of Sarah Doherty, the maker of SideStix. Kellett has helped create a new prototype to assist wheelchair users called ChairStairs that’s getting noticed.
The occupational therapy master’s student was tasked along with fellow student Justin Turner to come up with a concept to address a physical challenge to play or leisure, as part of their assistive technology module at UBC earlier this year.
Turner had previously spent time in a wheelchair and said he was hampered from getting on the floor to play with his cousins, which sparked the idea for ChairStairs.
ChairStairs is basically a set of fold-up stairs mounted beneath a wheelchair that can be deployed manually by the wheelchair user. Wheelchair users can then use upper body strength to lower themselves to the floor, one stair at a time. ChairStairs can also be used to return to the wheelchair independently.
“We were pretty blown away that it hadn’t been addressed yet,” Kellett said, noting the device could be used at the park when having a picnic, at the beach or to get in and out of a pool independently.
“There are external stairs that you can place in front of someone’s wheelchair, but nothing that travels with the person wherever they go and nothing that can be used entirely by the person themselves.”
The idea was a hit with Kellett’s and Turner’s instructor who challenged them to make a prototype and enter it into the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) Student Design Competition to be held in New Orleans June 28.
“We needed to complete a design brief and have a working prototype, and we were told about 10 days before the deadline,” Kellett said.
At the time, she and Turner were hundreds of miles apart on practicums so they did some of the prep work remotely and then met for a weekend on the Coast to get the prototype built.
“We definitely utilized my parents’ workshop. We used a lot of connections,” Kellett said.
“We got access to a wheelchair to make the prototype fit, we got a set of old RV steps from my mom’s neighbour that we cut down to size and modified, and we did all this in the SideStix workshop.”
Kellett and Turner got their prototype finished just in time to send it in for judging and ultimately won second place in the competition, which came with a $700 cash award.
The biggest prize for Kellett, though, was the paid-for trip to the RESNA 2017 conference in New Orleans, where the winners were announced.
“It was a really cool city to visit and also a really cool opportunity to present at an academic conference and see what’s out there and what other people are doing,” Kellett said.
“We made a few connections and met some people and got some great feedback on our design, so for me that was the big win.”
Kellett said she and Turner would like to move forward with development of ChairStairs and she plans to use her connections to see what’s possible in the future.
“We would love to develop it because it really does solve a lot of potential problems,” Kellett said.
“It could be really useful for many people.”
