Stairclimbers

New style climber

                                                                              Old style climber 

Back to work this week.

My first job is training staff in a bush school in the use of a stairclimber.

This was a regular part of the job, before the days of the BER scheme, but now that every school has at least one accessible building, it's become rare.

In the case of this student, the classroom is accessible, toilets built under BER are accessible, but the music room (attended once weekly) is not.

It's not practical for the music teacher to ship all her gear downstairs for the class lessons involving the student in the wheelchair, so a stairclimber is a solution.

Technology around disabilities has advanced in leaps and bounds in the thirty or so years that I've been involved, and nothing makes this clearer than a comparison between the new machine (top) and the old one (bottom).

The new one breaks down into three pieces that can be fitted into a small hatchback. The old one needed a station wagon or a ute.