March 1, 2026 · Executive evidence brief
Treat the wheelchair, the service around it, and the built environment as one access system
A wheelchair can support mobility, health, identity, independence, and participation. Its value depends on far more than delivery. Healthcare leaders must connect individualized assessment, appropriate equipment, skilled fitting, training, funding, repair, accessible environments, and user-defined outcomes.
When a chair, clinical service, repair route, or physical environment fails, mobility can become unusable even when every component appears successful on its own dashboard.
Leadership signal
Wheelchair access is a service commitment, not an equipment transaction
International Wheelchair Day is a celebration of what wheelchairs make possible and a practical test of whether organizations respect wheelchair users as experts in their own mobility. For hospital and health-system executives, the day should not be reduced to a message about equipment. It should reveal whether the enterprise can reliably connect a person’s goals with assessment, selection, funding, fitting, training, maintenance, repair, transportation, and accessible care environments.
The newest research reinforces that these elements are interdependent. A 2026 study with mothers of children and adolescents with severe cerebral palsy found concerns involving wheelchair dimensions, adjustability, weight, comfort, delivery quality, technical assistance, and handling confidence. The study does not establish universal priorities because it involved 30 caregivers in one context. It does show why leaders should avoid treating product characteristics, caregiver capability, and service quality as separate questions.2
A second 2026 study in rural Thailand examined how family support and environmental barriers shaped children’s daily participation after wheelchair provision. Its setting limits generalization, but the operating lesson travels: delivery is not the endpoint when terrain, school participation, household conditions, transportation, caregiver resources, and community access still determine whether mobility can be used.1
The executive mistake is to place each failure in a different department. Rehabilitation may own assessment. Supply chain may see procurement. Finance may see authorization. A vendor may own repair. Facilities may own entrances, exam rooms, and scales. Digital teams may own scheduling and portal accessibility. Transportation and community partners may sit outside the organization. The person using the wheelchair experiences one route, not an organizational chart.
That route needs one accountable executive sponsor and a visible operating owner. The sponsor does not need to make every clinical or technical decision. The sponsor must ensure that handoffs have acceptance criteria, stalled work has an escalation route, and outcomes include function and participation rather than only delivery. The operating owner must be able to see the entire pathway, convene the right teams, and close gaps that cross departmental boundaries.
This is also a dignity standard. Wheelchair users should participate in assessment, service design, facilities audits, communication review, and improvement governance. Their priorities may differ from what a procurement report or clinic template captures. User partnership is not a courtesy added after the system is designed. It is a source of operating intelligence.
Count the service as complete only when the selected wheelchair fits the person and intended environments, skills and maintenance needs are addressed, repair support is usable, and the person’s priority outcomes are reviewed.
Individualized service
Start with goals, fit, context, and informed choice
Appropriate provision begins with listening. The clinical team needs to understand mobility and postural needs, the person’s current and desired activities, transfers, endurance, pressure-management requirements, transportation, home and community environments, communication preferences, caregiver involvement when relevant, and prior equipment experience. A product code cannot carry that context. A high-quality assessment converts it into an agreed specification and makes tradeoffs visible.
Research with children and families illustrates why the assessment must be broader than body measurements. In the 2026 caregiver study, satisfaction concerns included comfort, dimensions, adjustability, weight, service delivery, and technical assistance.2 A 2025 evaluation of a tilt-in-space manual wheelchair for children in South India combined durability testing with field usability follow-up. Twelve children and their caregivers reported on function, participation, usability, and purchasing considerations. The small purposive sample and single design prevent broad conclusions, but the study demonstrates a disciplined principle: technical durability and lived usability require separate evaluation.4
Patient-centered outcome measures can help translate goals into the assessment. Tuersley and colleagues studied WATCh and WATCh-Ad use across 75 assessments completed by 15 staff at four National Health Service sites. Three-quarters of users or carers rated the tools as helpful or very helpful. Staff reported that the tools affected prescriptions in one quarter of cases and helped develop individual care plans in about one third. Staff also raised concerns about administration time, while some reported that experience and providing materials before appointments made use easier.11
Executives should resist turning those percentages into a universal performance target. They come from an implementation study in one national system. The more defensible lesson is that a person-centered measure needs workflow support. Materials should be accessible before the visit. Staff need time to learn the tool. Results should enter the specification and follow-up record. Leaders should decide who reviews unresolved goals and how the service responds when the delivered chair does not support the outcome the person identified.
Stakeholders saw the weakest performance in funding, procurement, maintenance, and repair
| Service component | Positive responses | Study population |
|---|---|---|
| Funding and procurement | 5% | 1,052 U.S. stakeholders |
| Follow-up, maintenance, and repair | 9% | |
| Fitting, training, and delivery | More than 42% |
Accountable pathway
Make every handoff visible from referral through participation
The service pathway needs explicit entry criteria, ownership, decision points, escalation, and closure. Research in El Salvador followed 247 manual-wheelchair users and 119 caregivers through a structured eight-step provision process with maintenance reminders. At six months, the investigators reported improvements in several health and quality-of-life indicators and wheelchair skills, along with changes in assistance required for activities of daily living. Repair frequency did not change. Because the study used a prospective within-subject design without a randomized comparator, leaders should not attribute every outcome to the pathway or assume the same effects in other systems.13
The study still supports a valuable operating proposition. Provision is a sequence. Assessment, prescription, funding, product preparation, fitting, training, follow-up, and maintenance must connect. If an organization monitors only the last delivery event, it cannot see repeated referrals, authorization waits, rejected specifications, missed fittings, inaccessible training, or unresolved repair requests.
A recognition-to-participation wheelchair service pathway
- Goals and referralAccept, prioritize, acknowledge
- Comprehensive assessmentPerson, posture, function, context
- Specification and fundingDocument choice and exceptions
- Preparation and deliveryQuality and readiness check
- Fit and skillsVerify use, comfort, safety
- Maintenance and repairTriage, interim support, closure
- Participation reviewReassess user-defined outcomes
For each step, leaders should define what accepted work looks like. A referral is not complete because it was sent. It is complete when the receiving service acknowledges it, confirms required information, communicates the next step, and places any exception in a visible queue. A specification is not complete when a form is signed. It is complete when clinical, functional, environmental, transportation, and user-priority requirements are reconciled and funding exceptions have an owner. Delivery is not complete until fit and function are verified, training occurs in an accessible format, and follow-up and repair contacts are understood.
Executive oversight should focus on the unresolved state. Which referrals lack acceptance? Which authorization requests have exceeded the local standard? Which chairs await components? Which users need refitting? Which repairs create immediate loss of mobility? Which environmental barriers prevent access to care? A dashboard that reports completed deliveries without unresolved work can make a fragmented system appear reliable.
Access, equity, and participation
A technically appropriate chair can still meet an inaccessible world
Healthcare organizations should examine the complete journey to care. A person may have an appropriate wheelchair and still face an entrance without a usable route, a scale that cannot accommodate the chair, an exam room with insufficient turning space, inaccessible imaging or treatment equipment, a portal that cannot be navigated with assistive technology, or transportation that does not match the chair and transfer needs. These are not separate hospitality concerns. They shape whether care can be reached and completed.
Kapsalis and colleagues reviewed 48 peer-reviewed studies on how inaccessible urban public spaces affect users of mobility assistive devices. Pathways, boarding ramps, entrances, confined spaces, and service surfaces appeared repeatedly among access barriers, with consequences for safety, mobility, transportation use, autonomy, and social participation. The review included heterogeneous studies and focused largely on high-income settings, so it does not produce one prevalence estimate or local risk score. It does establish that the built environment is an active part of mobility performance.15
Pettersson and colleagues analyzed 88 complaints submitted to the Swedish Equality Ombudsman. The records described exclusion across offices, schools, public transportation, restaurants, and cultural settings and showed how people used complaints to seek recognition, compliance, and change. Complaint data cannot establish the frequency of every barrier. It does provide direct evidence that inaccessibility is experienced as discrimination and restriction of participation.16
An accessibility audit should therefore begin with wheelchair users, not with a checklist alone. Nasiri and colleagues evaluated the reliability and validity of a stakeholder walkability and wheelability neighborhood audit tool. Measurement-property research does not prove that audits eliminate barriers, but it supports structured, stakeholder-informed observation of the environment.9 Health systems can apply the principle to entrances, parking, drop-off areas, clinics, inpatient rooms, diagnostic services, bathrooms, food service, emergency plans, wayfinding, digital touchpoints, and transportation interfaces.
Audit teams should document the exact barrier, affected journey, interim route, accountable owner, planned correction, target date, and user verification. A ramp that technically exists may still fail because of slope, surface condition, obstruction, location, or the locked door at its destination. An accessible exam room may be unavailable when scheduling logic does not protect it. A scale may exist but remain unusable because staff lack training. The distinction between asset presence and dependable access is central.
Equity review should include geography, payer, age, language, race and ethnicity when locally appropriate, type of wheelchair, diagnosis, caregiver reliance, rurality, digital access, and transportation. Leaders should use protected data governance and avoid presenting small groups in ways that compromise privacy. The objective is not to label populations as deficient. It is to identify where organizational design creates unequal delay, choice, repair access, or participation.
Where wheelchair access failure can enter the system
EffectMobility and participation disrupted
Access innovation
Use tele-assessment to extend expertise only when the local operating conditions work
Telehealth can reduce travel and extend specialist access, but it is not an automatic substitute for in-person assessment. Graham and colleagues conducted a mixed-method realist evaluation of complex wheelchair assessment in Aotearoa New Zealand. Four remote specialist assessors delivered five tele-assessments, and users reported high satisfaction with most goals achieved. Yet on-site assistants declined tele-assessment in 78% of cases in which specialists believed it could work. The researchers identified system design, confidence, technology use, trust between remote and on-site clinicians, and culturally responsive practice as important mechanisms.5
The small number of delivered assessments means leaders should not treat the study as proof of broad effectiveness. It is more useful as an implementation warning. Tele-assessment requires a trained local person who can support measurements and physical tasks, reliable video and connectivity, an accessible digital process, appropriate consent and privacy, product information, escalation to in-person care, and clarity about who holds clinical responsibility. If the organization adds video without redesigning those conditions, it may create another stalled referral path.
A responsible pilot should begin with explicit inclusion and exclusion criteria. Leaders should define which assessments are suitable, what equipment must be available locally, who performs hands-on elements, how technical failure is handled, and when the visit converts to in-person service. Measures should include offer rate, acceptance, completion, reasons for nonuse, travel avoided, time to decision, need for repeat assessment, user experience, and equity. High adoption is not inherently good if inappropriate cases are pushed into remote care. Low adoption may reveal workflow or confidence barriers that need correction rather than lack of demand.
Maintenance and repair
Loss of mobility requires a continuity response, not an ordinary work order
A wheelchair breakdown can affect mobility, positioning, work, school, caregiving arrangements, transportation, and access to medical care. The repair pathway therefore needs clinical and functional triage, not only a queue position. Hiles and colleagues interviewed four full-time wheelchair users about maintenance and repair access. Their six themes addressed service delivery, repair locations and options, policy, design and durability, knowledge, and the system itself. The sample is small, and the themes cannot be ranked. The study’s strength is that it centers user expertise and shows how barriers accumulate across policy, service, product, and information domains.6
The larger stakeholder survey by Beauregard and colleagues adds system-level context. Only 9% of responses were positive about follow-up, maintenance, and repair, while funding and procurement received 5% positive responses. Respondents included users and caregivers, clinicians, suppliers, manufacturers, and payers, although representation was uneven. The findings should guide investigation, not serve as a benchmark. They identify repair and procurement as visible priorities for redesign.7
Executives should establish an urgency framework with wheelchair users and clinical experts. The framework should consider whether the device is usable, whether positioning or skin risk has changed, whether essential activities can continue, whether the person has an appropriate backup, and how long a safe interim arrangement can last. It should specify who can authorize expedited parts, field service, a loaner, transport, or clinical reassessment. A vendor service-level agreement is incomplete if the health system cannot see unresolved cases or act when the person’s function changes.
Preventive maintenance should be treated as a supported capability, not an unfunded expectation placed entirely on users and families. Education should be tailored to the device and the person, use accessible formats, and distinguish routine user checks from work requiring trained personnel. The service should communicate where to call, what information is needed, what counts as urgent, how status updates will occur, and what to do if the chair becomes unusable outside normal hours.
Procurement decisions should account for repairability, part availability, local technical capability, expected use conditions, warranty terms, software or battery dependencies, and the need for growth or changing clinical needs. The lowest acquisition price can create higher access costs when the system cannot maintain the device. Leaders need total-pathway visibility rather than a product-only business case.
Human infrastructure
Build wheelchair capability across clinicians, technicians, assistants, users, and caregivers
Wheelchair service quality depends on a workforce with the right competencies and enough time to apply them. Training must extend beyond a small group of specialists if the pathway spans inpatient care, outpatient rehabilitation, primary care, school or community partners, suppliers, facilities, and emergency planning. The objective is not to make every professional an expert. It is to define role-appropriate skills, clear referral thresholds, and dependable access to specialized support.
During armed conflict in Ukraine, Tofani and colleagues evaluated a five-day, 40-hour training program for 39 rehabilitation professionals. All participants achieved basic service provision certification. Self-reported wheelchair skill performance rose from 42.72 to 68.08, and confidence rose from 40.72 to 67.72. Rehabilitation assistants showed the largest relative improvement. The design was pre-post without a control group, and the conflict setting is distinctive. Leaders should not infer downstream patient outcomes. The findings do support structured, hands-on training that includes different professional cadres when systems must expand capability.3
Kirby and colleagues studied a six-week remote-learning course with 121 providers. Mean subjective performance scores rose from 53.4% to 69.2%, and confidence rose from 53.5% to 69.5%. These were self-reported outcomes in an observational cohort. They do not establish equivalent changes in clinical performance. They indicate that remote education can contribute to capability when it includes structured content, practice, interaction, and evaluation.14
Executives should translate these findings into a competency architecture. Specialist assessors need advanced evaluation, specification, seating, positioning, and complex problem-solving skills. Therapists and assistants who support tele-assessment need clearly defined hands-on tasks and escalation. Nurses and frontline staff need to recognize positioning, skin, transfer, and equipment concerns and route them appropriately. Technicians need device-specific maintenance and repair capability. Scheduling and access staff need to identify accommodation requirements without forcing repeated disclosure. Facilities and emergency-preparedness teams need to understand wheelchair routes and evacuation implications. Users and caregivers need individualized education that respects prior expertise.
Skills and durable participation
Delivery creates potential. Skills, confidence, and accessible places determine use
Wheelchair skills training should be matched to the person, device, goals, environment, and stage of development. It can include propulsion or control use, turning, thresholds, slopes, transfers, pressure management, transportation, maintenance checks, communication about assistance, and problem-solving. Training should avoid assuming that every user needs the same skills or that independence is the only valued outcome. The person defines meaningful participation and the level and type of support that fits their life.
Chase and colleagues evaluated a five-week pediatric program implemented over two years. The pilot reported gains in selected skills and confidence items and a reduction in fear of falling. The design and adapted measures limit causal interpretation, but the results show that mobility skills often overlooked in routine inpatient or outpatient encounters can be taught and measured.12 A related qualitative study by Loeser and Chase interviewed nine caregivers after participation. Caregivers described effects on occupational engagement and quality of life and emphasized the novelty and importance of community wheelchair-skills programming. Their views are not a controlled outcome measure, but they highlight the value of asking families what persists after a program ends.10
Powered mobility can also change how young children explore and participate. In a photovoice study, six families of children with spinal muscular atrophy type 1 documented experiences after powered-mobility training. Families described emotional and social engagement alongside barriers involving home space, public accessibility, and the need for individualized adaptations. The sample is small and qualitative, so the findings should not be converted into a population effect. They demonstrate that device capability and environmental access must be evaluated together.8
Follow-up should ask whether the person can use the wheelchair in the places and activities that matter, whether new barriers or discomfort have emerged, whether the person wants additional skills, and whether the equipment still matches growth, health, transport, and participation needs. A technically acceptable fit at delivery can change over time. Durable service requires planned reassessment and an easy route back into care.
Operating model
Put the wheelchair user’s priorities at the center of accountable interfaces
The operating system needs a central source of truth that follows the person without flattening individual goals into a generic template. That record should include agreed outcomes, specification and configuration, fit and training decisions, repair and maintenance contacts, risk and escalation information, and follow-up status. Access must follow role, privacy, and consent requirements. The purpose is to prevent every handoff from starting over.
Five interfaces around the wheelchair user’s goals
A multidisciplinary wheelchair council or access committee can govern this model if it has authority and user representation. Membership may include wheelchair users and caregivers, rehabilitation, nursing, rehabilitation engineering, suppliers, procurement, payer relations, facilities, digital accessibility, transportation, patient experience, quality, risk, and finance. The council should not become another review layer for routine cases. It should address cross-system failures, establish definitions, remove policy conflicts, and review patterns that individual teams cannot solve.
The board and executive team should receive a concise view of access, reliability, unresolved risk, experience, and equity. They should ask which delays are growing, whether urgent repair support works after hours, whether inaccessible routes remain open in practice, how users validate corrections, and whether procurement decisions include lifecycle support. Governance should make exceptions visible without exposing private information.
Decision-grade measurement
Measure time, fit, reliability, participation, experience, and equity together
Delivery counts answer an important but incomplete question. Leaders also need to know how long people wait, where work stalls, whether the first fit meets agreed requirements, whether training and follow-up occur, how repairs affect mobility, and whether user-defined outcomes are achieved. Measures should be few enough to govern and specific enough to act on.
Each measure needs a numerator, denominator, starting event, completion event, exclusions, source, owner, review cadence, and equity dimensions. Median time alone can hide people waiting far longer, so leaders should pair it with a high percentile and unresolved-age bands. A repair metric should distinguish acknowledgment from safe resolution. A first-fit measure should define what counts as accepted and whether planned adjustment differs from unplanned refitting. Experience questions should be accessible and allow people to report priorities that structured scales miss.
A wheelchair access scorecard leaders can govern
| Signal | Definition and denominator | Owner | Cadence | Interpretive limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assessment access | Days from accepted referral to completed specialist assessment; all accepted referrals | Rehabilitation operations | Monthly | Stratify by urgency and exclude user-requested deferrals transparently |
| Specification-to-delivery | Days from approved specification to ready-for-use delivery; all approved orders | Procurement and service lead | Monthly | Separate payer, supplier, part, and internal delays |
| First-fit reliability | Deliveries accepted without unplanned refit within the defined follow-up window; all deliveries | Clinical service lead | Monthly | A planned growth adjustment is not automatically a failure |
| Urgent repair closure | Time from triaged urgent request to safe resolution or appropriate interim mobility; all urgent requests | Equipment services | Weekly | Define urgency with users and clinical experts |
| User-defined outcome review | Completed follow-ups that reassess the person’s priority outcomes; all due follow-ups | Wheelchair service team | Monthly | Completion does not mean the outcome was achieved |
| Accessible journey closure | User-validated barriers corrected by target date; all accepted barriers | Facilities and accessibility | Quarterly | Asset presence does not prove dependable use |
Measurement should not become surveillance of wheelchair users. Data collection must have a clear service purpose, accessible consent and communication when required, privacy protection, and meaningful feedback to the people whose experience generated the information. Leaders should report what changed, what remains unresolved, and what the evidence cannot establish. A polished dashboard without correction is another form of delay.
90-day executive agenda
Repair one complete wheelchair access route
A focused 90-day effort can reveal whether the organization can coordinate across clinical service, procurement, repair, facilities, digital access, and patient experience. Choose one population or route with visible delay, repeated refitting, repair complaints, inaccessible care settings, or failed follow-up. Do not begin with a broad pledge. Begin with a defined pathway and a small set of stable measures.
Twelve weeks from listening to governed reliability
Listen, govern, and expose the route
- Name the executive sponsor and operating owner.
- Compensate or otherwise support wheelchair-user participation according to organizational policy.
- Map referral, assessment, funding, delivery, fitting, training, repair, and follow-up.
- Audit one care journey, including parking, entrance, room, equipment, restroom, portal, and transport interfaces.
- Baseline delays, unresolved work, fit issues, repair response, and user-priority follow-up.
Redesign the highest-risk handoffs
- Create acceptance criteria for referrals and specifications.
- Define repair urgency, interim mobility, escalation, and status communication.
- Correct one physical or digital access barrier with user validation.
- Assign role-specific wheelchair competencies and training.
- Test a tele-assessment route only if local capability and case criteria support it.
Test, measure, and make ownership routine
- Run the redesigned pathway with a small cohort.
- Review every stalled case and unintended consequence.
- Compare process results with the baseline without claiming causation.
- Ask wheelchair users whether the change improved the actual journey.
- Report what changed, what did not, and which barrier now requires executive action.
Leadership close
Mobility becomes dependable when the whole system works
International Wheelchair Day should celebrate wheelchair users without turning disability into inspiration for others. The strongest organizational response is practical: listen to wheelchair users, treat appropriate provision as a complete service, make repair a continuity issue, build workforce capability, remove environmental barriers, and measure outcomes that matter to the person.
Executives should ask one direct question: if a wheelchair user entered our pathway today, could they move from their goal to an appropriate chair, usable environments, timely support, and accountable follow-up without carrying the coordination burden alone? If the answer depends on extraordinary persistence, personal contacts, or luck, the system is not yet reliable.
The next step does not require a sweeping campaign. Select one route. Invite wheelchair users to examine it. Make every wait and handoff visible. Correct one barrier that crosses departments. Then verify the change in the real environment where mobility and participation occur.
Related pathways
Continue the access and participation work
Authoritative public resources
- United Spinal Association’s 2026 observances
- International Wheelchair Day 2026 materials from the International Society of Wheelchair Professionals
- World Health Organization wheelchair provision guidelines
Clinical boundary: This executive brief does not provide individual medical or wheelchair-prescription advice. Wheelchair selection, configuration, fitting, pressure management, skills training, and repair decisions should involve appropriately qualified professionals and the wheelchair user. Urgent health or safety concerns require prompt local clinical evaluation.
Scholarly evidence
References
- Kumazawa, Y., Terada, K., Satonaka, A., Wachi, M., & Kida, N. (2026). Wheelchair provision for children with disabilities in rural Thailand: The roles of family support and environmental barriers in daily participation. Disabilities, 6(2), 26. https://doi.org/10.3390/disabilities6020026
- Alves, M. J., Orsi Medola, F., Paschoarelli, L. C., Pavel, N., & Baleotti, L. R. (2026). Wheelchair satisfaction: A study with mothers of children and adolescents with severe cerebral palsy. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 21(2), 828–839. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2025.2537338
- Tofani, M., Golyk, V., Dieieva, K., Kamadu, A., Quinn, M. E., & Tawashy, A. E. (2025). Wheelchair service provision training during armed conflict: Preliminary results from a pre-post study in Ukraine. Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences, 6, 1723913. https://doi.org/10.3389/fresc.2025.1723913
- Dumm, A., Ghosh, R., Raju, S., Kamalakannan, S., Ghosh Moulic, S., & Mhatre, A. (2025). Durability and usability evaluation of a tilt-in-space manual wheelchair for children in India. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 20(8), 3212–3219. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2025.2463552
- Graham, F., Desha, L., Boland, P., Jones, B., Grant, S., Brown, R., Williman, J., & Grainger, R. (2025). A mixed methods realist analysis of telehealth delivery of complex wheelchair assessment in Aotearoa New Zealand: Contexts, mechanisms, and outcomes. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 20(7), 2208–2220. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2025.2492361
- Hiles, K. M., Schein, R. M., Pramana, G., & Schmeler, M. R. (2025). Wheelchair user’s perceived access to maintenance and repair services: A qualitative study. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 20(5), 1351–1359. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2024.2442713
- Beauregard, T. A., Schein, R. M., Berner, T. F., McKernan, G., Schmeler, M. R., Dicianno, B. E., & DiGiovine, C. P. (2025). Investigation of stakeholder perceptions of the wheelchair service delivery process. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 20(5), 1331–1339. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2024.2442705
- Coello-Villalón, M., Díaz-López, C. I., López-Muñoz, P., Romay-Barrero, H., Pacheco-da-Costa, S., Plasencia-Robledo, M., Longo, E., & Palomo-Carrión, R. (2025). Families’ perceptions of powered mobility for participation in children with spinal muscular atrophy type 1: A photovoice study. Health Expectations, 28(3), e70278. https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.70278
- Nasiri, R., Mahmood, A., & Mortenson, W. B. (2025). Enhancing urban accessibility: Reliability and validity assessment of the Stakeholders’ Walkability/Wheelability Audit in Neighbourhoods Tool. Disabilities, 5(2), 42. https://doi.org/10.3390/disabilities5020042
- Loeser, M. L., & Chase, T. (2025). Skills on wheels: Caregiver perspectives on the design and long-term impact of a pediatric wheelchair skills training program. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 20(3), 663–678. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2024.2405896
- Tuersley, L., Quaye, N. A., Pisavadia, K., Edwards, R. T., & Bray, N. (2025). Use of patient-centred outcome measures alongside the personal wheelchair budget process in NHS England: A mixed methods approach to exploring the staff and service user experience of using the WATCh and WATCh-Ad. PLoS ONE, 20(1), e0312967. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0312967
- Chase, T., Mendoza, K., Rager, C., Stiens, M., Loeser, M., Stead, T., Kozlowski, W., Van Antwerp, L., Camilleri, J., & O’Neil, J. (2024). Skills on wheels: Initial pre-post findings from a pilot study of a pediatric wheelchair skills training program. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 19(8), 2945–2952. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2024.2324146
- Garcia-Mendez, Y., D’Innocenzo, M., Pearlman, J., Vásquez-Gabela, S., Rosen, P., Rodriguez-Funes, M.-V., Kirby, R. L., & Mhatre, A. (2024). Effects of the WHO 8-step wheelchair-service-delivery process on wheelchair users in El Salvador: A cohort study. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 19(5), 2076–2087. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2023.2256808
- Kirby, R. L., Smith, C., Osmond, D., Moore, S. A., Theriault, C. J., & Sandila, N. (2024). A remote-learning course can improve the subjective wheelchair-skills performance and confidence of wheelchair service providers: An observational cohort study. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 19(4), 1729–1738. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2023.2230259
- Kapsalis, E., Jaeger, N., & Hale, J. (2024). Disabled-by-design: Effects of inaccessible urban public spaces on users of mobility assistive devices—A systematic review. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 19(3), 604–622. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2022.2111723
- Pettersson, C., Baudin, K., & Hedvall, P.-O. (2024). The struggle for access—A qualitative document study of how people using wheeled mobility devices experience exclusion and discrimination. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 19(3), 537–545. https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2022.2107094