In this blog, Fraser Somerville talks about his journey towards driving his powerchair independently using head switches.
From the age of six I got my first wheelchair which was a manual chair called Chunc. I was getting pushed around all my childhood and I didn’t particularly like it because it had an impact on my independence.
At the age of 15 I got my first powerchair which I named Derrick. I controlled my power chair using a joystick on a tray. This didn’t work well for me because I have a tendency to swipe my arms due to my involuntary movements and it was hard for me to get a good grip on the joystick. Everything came to a halt because of Covid being in the way.
In 2022 I had a referral to see if there was another method I could use for driving my power chair. My bioengineer suggested I use head switching and I was really up for trialing it out.
A couple of months later my powerchair journey started all over again but this time my head was doing the driving. I was really getting on well with the head switches but they were clicking all the time when I was eating or drinking or doing an activity. I looked into head arrays which has three separate bits of the headrest and the headrest was a lot softer to lay my head on.
The day had finally arrived when the headset was put on to my wheelchair. I absolutely loved it, I was getting on really well with it until one day the right driving pad decided to break and it started to drive on its own which was really scary because I had no control over where the chair was going. Oh no. Alarm bells started to ring and I had a feeling this product wasn’t compatible with my involuntary movements.
Fast forward three headrests later I decided to revert back to my original clicky switches as I had lost the trust of the head arrays. I felt more comfortable. However, that was short lived as on holiday the power chair went back to its old ways of not stopping when I wanted it to.
Now I feel like history is repeating itself as I have had to replace several forward switches due to my strength and my involuntary movements. I’ve now gained a fourth switch which I can access via my chin, this is my emergency stop as I felt it was necessary for when the chair decides to do it’s own thing.
After having several meetings with my bioengineer, we have decided to part ways on the existing buttons and replace them with enclosed proximity switches which I hope helps my situation going forward. I will keep you all posted on my progress.