Anthropometry of Wheeled Mobility Project: Final Report

Conference Papers and Journals

From the initial stages of the project, when it was funded by NIDRR, the research staff submitted and presented papers and presentations to annual and other periodic professional conferences. In all cases, our conference papers were peer reviewed and appeared in the proceedings of the conferences, if there were formal proceedings. We have presented 24 papers and additional presentations in the following associations and conferences:

1.  Rehabilitation Engineering and Technology Society of North America (RESNA) annual conferences

2.  Human Factors and Ergonomics Society annual conferences

3.  Digital Human Modeling for Design and Engineering Symposium (annual)

4.  International Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE) annual conferences

5.  INCLUDE (international bi-annual conference of design researchers interested in inclusive design)

6.  International Conference on Aging Disability and Independence (internationalbi-annual conference)

7.  Transportation Research Board annual conferences

8.  TRANSED (international bi-annual conference of professionals interested in accessibility to public transportation)

9.  American Institute of Architects annual conferences

In several conferences, we organized symposia or workshops on the topic of the anthropometry of disability. The latest examples were a workshop at the RESNA conference in June of 2010 that attracted an audience of about 100 rehabilitation professionals and scientists and a symposium at the AHFE. We have received extensive positive feedback on the quality and importance of the work.

Conference papers are short in format and thus are usually very focused. After developing conference papers, we expanded the papers and developed peer-reviewed articles for scientific journals. These articles are the gold standard of research publications because they are archived in research libraries and available through online searches. Rigorous peer review procedures insure a high quality. Acceptance for publication means that the article has been vetted by other experts and has reached or exceeded their standards of quality. We have published 8 peer reviewed journal articles and have several others in process. We edited two special issues of journals that included articles from both our research group and other colleagues working in this field. One appeared in the International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics (2004) and the other in Assistive Technology (2010). These two issues are now key resources for researchers in the field.

The published papers and journal articles are now available to provide evidence for proposed revisions to standards in a concise and carefully documented form. They provide background on the methods we developed for conducting the research, the importance of the specific topic to people with disabilities, the results of our research and the implications of those results for design, standards and policy. Topics addressed include the structural anthropometry methods, the functional anthropometry methods, clear floor area, reach, grip force, the interactive database, building design applications, transportation applications and the comparison of standards and research. The full list of publications is provided in the Appendix.