Wheelchair Accessories

The Right Wheelchair Accessories Can Make a Difference

There are many different styles and brands of wheelchairs on the market today and each one is selected by the person who must use it to suit his personal needs. While they may all look similar to each other there are any number of wheelchair accessories that can both make the wheelchair more comfortable and personalized while helping to make it more functional for everyday activities.

Among the wheelchair accessories you can buy are a good selection of replacement wheelchair parts, often these are upgrades of the ones you wheelchair came with such as better seat cushions or soft arm rests or even better tyres for your chair. If you use a manual wheelchair you might want to consider upgrading to a set of new lightweight carbon fiber wheels to reduce the amount of energy you need to expend to get places in a hurry. The list of accessories is as large as the number of different wheelchairs available.

While it may seem unusual to the person who is not confined to a wheelchair there is a definite need for wheelchair clothing. Much like buying any other form of clothing the most important thing to consider is does it fit you, and is the clothing your style since being in a wheelchair does not mean you have to wear institutional clothing. Here is where the similarity ends, the clothing you wear needs to be loose enough to be comfortable when you are seated, this means pants should not bunch up at the waist and shirts need to be looser across the shoulders.

Another area of clothing that those who use manual wheelchairs need to be very concerned with is clothing that is too loose or hangs down to where it can get tangled up in the wheels and cause an accident or injure you by pulling you into the wheel or upsetting your wheelchair if a wheel locks up when you clothing gets wrapped around the wheel.

Wheelchair tyres are considered part of the wheelchair accessories catalog and there are two distinctly different types to choose from depending on how and where you plan to use your wheelchair. The standard issue wheelchair comes with solid rubber tyres which are made to handle any terrain and never get a puncture. The rubber will last virtually forever which is a distinct advantage; however the person in the wheelchair will feel every bump no matter how little. Recent advances in solid tyres include a rubber insert that helps to soften the ride will still remaining puncture proof.

The other alternative is the pneumatic or air filled tyre that is just like a bicycle tire in that it has a tube inside the tyre. While the ride is much softer you have the risk of getting a flat tyre that will require repair before you can use your wheelchair again. If you choose to go with pneumatic tyres you should consider a spare as one of you most important wheelchair accessories.