Hi everybody. I am Joel, and have been confined to a wheelchair ever since I was in a car wreck way back in 2003. In the accident I sustained a brain injury, which in addition to taking my ability to walk caused my fingers and hands to contract to a degree that makes manually driving a wheelchair very difficult. I received my first power wheelchair from my insurance company the next spring so I could use it to get between classes in high school. I kept this chair through undergrad, and was able to get a replacement model right before I started grad school. I  kept using that chair until just last summer, and then received another replacement. Now while I am very happy that every time I got a new chair it was covered by my health insurance plan, the one problem I have is that over more than a decade of research and through three different models, the wheelchair I am sitting in now looks just like the first one I got out of the hospital back in the spring of 04. I want to change this not just for my own welfare but also to make the lives of so many 'disabled' or 'handcapped' people more accessible and more enjoyable.

Power wheelchairs in America are much too large and cumbersome, so we want to attach a wheelchair-like seat to a Segway to make a self-propelling alternative that will be much easier to transport and therefor take out. Whenever I want to leave the house now, I can contact a van service a day in advance to transport me in my current behemoth of a chair, or I must go in my manual chair, which I am unable to propel for long distances or for extended periods of time. And the van doesn't run on nights or weekends, so if I want to go out to dinner or a bar I am  forced to take my manual chair and must rely on others to help me get around. If we are able to get funding to construct the desired product, this Segway-wheelchair will weigh less than one hundred pounds (my current chair weighs 350+) and will be much easier to transport, as it will only require AT MOST two adults and a car trunk.

The money we raise will go towards purchasing a used Segway from a Segway tourism company in Winston Salem that we can adapt to make accessible, and the sooner we receive funding the better as these used Segways are selling fast. In fact the pictures and video we have come from trying out a mocked up product similar to what we're aiming for at this company in Winston. If we receive this funding and are able to go ahead with the project, it will do wonders for my personal independence and yes my social life, as I will be vastly more self-determinant, and for that I will be eternally grateful.