Big news last week. Austin Whitney walked to receive his diploma at UC Berkley. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/15/BARO1JFEP8.DTL.
Austin incurred a spinal cord injury in a drunk driving accident just before starting college. He uses a wheelchair for mobility like so many others. After working for nine months with the engineering department at Berkley on the exoskeleton that they had been developing for 10 years, he was able to don the nearly full-bodied apparatus pull himself up on a special walker and “walk” across the stage. This has prompted predictions of the robotic exoskeletons helping hundreds of thousands of wheelchair users to walk.
Really?
Let’s look at this without the blinders.
People who use wheelchairs can get into the chair and go about their day. This can include working, studying, driving, playing, taking part in sports, going out to restaurants, and so many other things. In other words, people who use wheelchairs live life.
Or, we can strap on this apparatus, including a power pack the size of most backpacks, and pull ourselves up on the crutches or walkers that have the controls and take one slow painstaking step at a time. Even this progress would come after months of training and therapy, all of which would be time taken out of living life.
For those who are convinced that walking – no matter how poor the quality of walking – in the only important thing in life, this may be an answer. For hundreds of thousands of wheelchair users, I don’t think so.
I congratulate Austin for graduating from college without losing any time. That is an accomplishment that is noteworthy.
I also congratulate the engineers at UC Berkley for developing this robotic exoskeleton. I’m sure that it has many interesting applications.
That said, I need to emphasize that promoting walking over quality of life is not doing persons with disabilities any favors. Let’s get our priorities straight.
Annette Bourbonniere
401-846-1960
Fax: 401-846-1944
Twitter: @AccessInclude
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