Things that crack me up #47

Image description: A color photo of a modern, high-backed wheelchair all in a shade of light gray similar to office computers. The seat pictured is one option -- with a cut-out in the middle to acommodate the toilet underneath. The whole seat, with high back, headrest, and slim minimal armrests, looks a lot like modern office furniture with foot platforms attached and a different wheel base.

So, there are some cool things about this "high-tech wheelchair" called the Home Chare. It's a design project, I believe, not something actually being manufactured anywhere yet. The concept is basically a chair for everything but sleeping -- it can lie flat so as to be a level transfer height from a bed, it can detach from it's wheeled base and attach to a stairway lift, and you can poop in it by simply wheeling the chair over what looks like a standard size toilet.

Though for that last to work, as noted at Student Tech News, the wheelchair user needs to be pantless. That's the part that has me giggling:

"I have a modern new wheelchair! But there's one catch: I will no longer be wearing pants of any kind!"

In all serious, there's some design genius and also some serious flaws here, unless this is still meant to be an auxiliary chair to a person's main power wheelchair as even the large back wheels of a manual chair have to be attached for this to be maneuverable from a sitting position. Like the wheel base that accommodates a toilet beneath it, large wheels that a user can touch and turn while in the chair seem to be an accessory rather than a built-in feature, and since there's no motor or power mechanism of any kind, this is a chair to be pushed around in rather than to use for oneself. It's for ease of care-giving, not the ease of a wheelchair user. And that's fine if this is an auxiliary chair to the one the person can use independently.

Other possible flaws that I see include the tiny armrests, which I would try to lean on or use to shift my weight and find myself on the floor because they are not big enough to keep anyone who needs support from flopping out. Also, while this would make an awesome shower chair -- or poop chair, I guess -- I do not want to spend all the hours of my day in a chair lacking cushiness. Disabled people's asses, what I know of them, are rarely impressed by very modern, thin seating, even if it does include gel cushion. Padding everywhere, please, if I'm sitting here all week.

Finally, I kind of like wearing pants.