Anthropometry of Wheeled Mobility Project: Final Report

Workshops

With separate sponsorship from the U.S. Access Board prior to this project, we held two international workshops that focused on current issues of applying the anthropometric data of individuals with disability to design. These provided venues in which people from around the world exchanged ideas about the current issues in the collection of anthropometric data, digital human modeling and the applications of the data in design. In each, we also discussed the special nature of anthropometry of disability and wheeled mobility users in particular, for example, the limitations of using full body scanning due to occlusion of body landmarks by WhMD.

 “The Anthropometrics of Disability” workshop was held in June of 2001 and was attended by 40 experts in the areas of anthropometry, human modeling, data fusion and population-based statistics. Participants included researchers, standards developers, experts in accessible design and wheelchair designers. A workshop report that summarizes the workshop’s outcomes is available at http://www.udeworld.com/anthropometrics.html. It describes advances in the state of the art in anthropometry, the challenges of measuring people with disabilities and recommendations made by the experts at the workshop. This report formed the foundation for a special issue of the International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics titled “Anthropometry and Disability” that was published in 2004.

“Space Requirements for Wheeled Mobility” workshop was held in 2003. It was attended by 70 experts from the U.S. and abroad. The participants represented the fields of anthropometry, biomechanics, human factors engineering, human modeling, rehabilitation engineering, standards development, wheelchair manufacturer and consumer advocacy. A second workshop report was produced and is available at http://www.udeworld.com/anthropometrics.html. It provides abstracts of commissioned and submitted papers as well as a description of the discussion that followed each paper presentation. The presentations made at this workshop formed the basis of what eventually became a special issue of Assistive Technology titled “Space Requirements for Wheeled Mobility” that was published in 2010.