An investigation into furniture design for the rehabilitation of disabled people

It is explained by WHO that %10 of the world consist of disabled people. It might be said that there are approximately 500 million disabled people and with their families 1.5 billion people get involved with this social problem. By these data, the problems which disabled people are having, cannot be inconsiderate because the world we are living on aims to create a society that everyone and anyone may join it. But as a result of researches, the environment is not well prepared for disabled ones and those peoples` attendance to society is limited. In this research living conditions of disabled people, their problems and solutions to these problems were studied. First of all, the source and statistical data were collected and a survey on this subject was conducted on the parents and physiotherapists of disabled people. The analysis of education institutions which make rehabilitation and the survey results show that the arrangement of places in line with the needs of disabled people and obtainment of devices to increase their individual movements would facilitate livings and treatment processes of these people. Therefore, an original device has been designed taking account the ergonomic criteria to decrease their dependency to other people and increase their existing potentials to the maximum. Plywood, metallic bend connection elements, wheels with the brake mechanism, adjustable connecting nuts which allow mount, dismantle and modify of device have been used in the vii production and the design of device has been completed by the artificial leather and cellulose based thinner. The device has been designed consistent with the mass-production. In case the device is produced by the great amounts with mass-production, the families with low income of disabled individuals would be able to buy it. The device has been designed to be adjustable for disabled children who are between 65-130 cm taking account the critical periods in child development. It is understood that using furniture in different and same group of disabled people, designed for who have different broken shapes, and the dimensions functional, ergonomics and productive ones could be useful as production.