Allen Samuels Designs Vest for Wheelchair Users

Stamps Emeritus Professor and Dean Allen Samuels has created a new vest with built-in pouches designed to help wheelchair users access items needed for daily tasks.

As part of my ongoing Design research, I observed that people in wheelchairs, like the rest of us, require numerous common and useful items in their daily life. These include a cell phone, glasses, meds, pen-paper, comb-brush, a wallet and I.D., a water bottle, etc. For people in a wheelchair accessing these items is not always easy and immediate as they carry out their daily lives. To assist and enable them, I designed a simple, one piece, denim vest with three POUCHES on one side and one large POUCH on the other side. The vest can be worn with one or three POUCHES on the front providing easy and immediate access to useful items with reach at chest and thigh locations. The vest will be made of bright, high visibility denim providing added visibility as one travels in a wheelchair out of doors in the day time. This safety consideration due to the high number of auto-wheelchair accidents that occur in high numbers each year, nation wide.