2013 Volume 12 Issue 1 Pages 1-5
As our country is facing a rapid increase of aging population along with a huge amount of people with disabilities striving to live an independent life, the chances of wheelchair users going out are increasing significantly. Based on this social background, the Barrier Free law was in place in 2006. Although Barrier Free public facilities in city areas are being improved nowadays, there are still lots of voices from wheelchair users that these facilities are not easy to use for them. It appears that such facilities still need to be further improved in order to provide better access to wheelchair users. With such background, the purpose of this study is to investigate and evaluate how wheelchair users can access those facilities safely when going out in their daily lives. Focusing on roughness of road surfaces, the relations between vibrations, comfortability and centroid fluctuation of wheel chair users in their daily uses are investigated.
