A. The seat of a standard wheelchair is approximately 480mm above floor level. Standard washroom pans are around 430mm to the top of the seat. It may be possible to slide
off of the wheelchair and drop onto the toilet seat. Getting back onto the wheelchair is a different matter. Even with good upper body strength, it is practically impossible for most
people to raise themselves up by around 50mm and across by 600mm using arm strength alone.
The likelihood is that, having reached the toilet, you will be fully committed to using it so you go ahead and transfer from your wheelchair to the Washroom. You are then faced with a couple of possibilities, neither of them attractive.
- You can pull the alarm cord for assistance (assuming there is one and you can reach it) and hope that there is someone monitoring the alarm.
- You want to be independent and don’t want to cause a fuss so you try to transfer back to your wheelchair. So you pluck up the courage, try to launch yourself from the toilet seat across onto your wheelchair and only make it half way. You and your wheelchair topple over near the far wall where there is no alarm. What happens next? One can only imagine.