Modified Shoe Donner
For many people, simple tasks, such as putting on one's shoes, can easily be
taken for granted. For others, they present a major challenge.
A local woman suffering from Spastic Diplegia, a form of
cerebral palsy, struggled with this task every day. Because restrictive shoes
were too difficult to slide on, her only alternatives were wearing sandals all
year round or asking for assistance with her shoes.
In an attempt to be able to put on her shoes independently, she purchased a "shoe donner." The commercially available device holds a shoe open and in place while the user slides their foot into the shoe.
Unfortunately, the shoe donner was of little assistance: the woman's limited range of motion made it impossible for her to bring her leg high enough to effectively use the product. Additionally, using the shoe donner required a certain degree of coordination. But with reduced foot control, she was unable to slide her foot into the device. Orthopedic shoes also presented a problem as the shoe donner was not designed for highly specialized footwear.
Fed up with her shoe donner and tired of wearing sandals, the
woman asked CanAssist for help. Scott Lagadyn, a member of CanAssist's
mechanical engineering team, realized it would be possible to transform her ineffective
device into an easy-to-use tool.
The original shoe donner contained a back leg support that frequently got in the way and was removed. Scott then created and added handles which would enable the client to pull on a shoe instead of having to push her foot down into the shoe.
"The handles that were added are extendable like a telescope, so
they collapse and expand easily," says Scott. "This feature not only makes the
donner more reachable and easy to use, but by collapsing the handles, it also
makes it portable. The handles can
also be adjusted for angle."
The modified shoe donner is one of the many tools developed by
CanAssist that help increase the independence of people with special needs.
With the help of the modified shoe donner, putting on footwear is no longer an
impossible task.
(This technology was delivered in December 2009.)