ATU606 – ReHaDesign Wheelchair Accessories with Dr. Eugene Emmer

Hi. This is Eugene Emmer. I’m the owner of RehaDesign Wheelchair Accessories. This is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello, and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson, with the INDATA Project at Easters Seals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana.

Welcome to episode 606 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on January 6th, 2023. For our first show of the new year, we’re welcoming Dr. Eugene Emmer on to talk about RehaDesign’s Wheelchair Accessories, and all the great things that they offer. We hope you all had a wonderful holiday. Now let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

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Listeners, today on the show I’m very excited to introduce Dr. Eugene Emmer from RehaDesign Wheelchair Accessories. He’s here to tell us all about some of the cool things that they make and distribute to make life a little more enjoyable for individuals who use wheelchairs. Eugene, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much, Josh.

I’m excited to get into talking about all these great things. But before we do that, can you tell our listeners a little bit about you and your background?

Sure. I’m an American, but I’m living in Europe. I spent basically half my life in the United States and the second half in Europe. I started RehaDesign Wheelchair Accessories about 15 years ago. It’s based in Northern Europe in a tiny country called Lithuania. My education, I have a doctorate in physiology. I’m a physiologist. Then I did a master’s degree in business. My career was mostly focused on the pharmaceutical industry, but then when I started my own business, I started in the medical industry, and more specifically in the wheelchair industry. I’ve been working in the wheelchair industry, as I said, for about 15 years.

Nice. I looked through everything. You’ve got a lot of really cool products available, but the first one I wanted to talk about and really focus on is these wheelchair slippers and socks. Can you just start off by telling us what these are?

Sure. Let me explain how we came up with the name Wheelchair Slippers and Socks. The idea is, is that the wheels of wheelchair are sort of like the feet for wheelchair users. They’re sort of similar to feet. That’s how wheelchair users get around. When able-bodied people come into a house, they usually don’t wear their shoes on their feet. They often take their shoes off and they either wear socks or slippers. We saw that there was a problem for wheelchair users that when they would bring their wheelchair in the house, they would oftentimes drag in dirt from outside. It was difficult to manage that. They’d have to basically clean off the tires or track the dirt inside the house damaging and getting dirty the floors or the carpets of the house. That was our first part. We created slippers to deal with that problem.

Basically slippers just cover the tires of manual wheelchairs. The idea is you put them on when you come inside the house and it keeps the house clean and it protects the floors and the carpet from damage and dirt caused by wheelchair tires. We’ve been marketing those for about, let’s say, about 15 years now. That’s all we had. We only had covers for the rear wheels. About six years ago, we had a customer that contacted us and they asked what about the front tires, the small caster wheels? I said, “You know, I’ve been working on covers for the front casters for years, but I could never manage to come up with a solution that would work.” It was relatively easy to cover the rear wheels, but covering those small casters was, it was a challenge. I couldn’t figure it out.

Then one night, in the middle of the night, this idea came to me how to do it. I created a sample for it and reworked it a couple times. It was like a eureka moment, and wheelchair socks were born. Wheelchair socks have been available for about the last six years. It’s patented. It’s got a patent because there’s really something very unique. When you see them, they may look like they’re quite obvious to make, but really, Josh, I struggled for years trying to come up with covers for the front casters. It just didn’t come to me for many, many years.

But anyway, like I said, we’ve had wheelchair socks on the market for about six years. Now we cover both rear wheels and the front wheels of manual wheelchairs.

Oh, it’s nice. As you were talking about that, I was like, well, why would it be so much harder on the front? I was like, oh, wait a minute. The way that they’re on there, you’re not just sliding something straight over it as you can with the back wheels. I can-

Exactly.

… definitely see how there was a bit of a challenge for that because a full circle, oh, it’d be tricky to get in there and-

That’s right, and to not rub against the frame of the caster or the fork of the caster. That’s really the real challenge, how to do that with and make it fit.

For years, I tried to come up with it. I couldn’t come up with the solution. Then, as I said, it was a eureka moment when it came to me. It works. It works quite well. Putting the slippers onto the rear wheels is fairly simple. As you said, it just slips over the rear wheels, you push them, put them about halfway on, you roll the wheelchair forward. Then you pull it up on the other side. It’s quite easy to put on. But putting them on the front casters, it’s also quite easy, but not as easy, of course. They open up. Then they go around the casters. Then they close with like a Velcro type-

Oh, yeah.

… of a closure. It goes on and covers the front caster. That’s the idea is to cover them, and as I say, to keep the tires from damaging the floors and carpets for manual wheelchair users.

You brought up tracking in dirt and all those kind of things, but I know I’ve had folks before that have complained about the scuffs. They say on my hard floors there’s always scuffs and-

Exactly.

… all these kind of things. I can see how they’d be just a huge benefit for those folks with hard floors. Not just keeping the dirt off, but just getting those darn scuffs that you got to scuff and have polished to try to get off there. I can see how they’d be a huge benefit for those folks as well.

I tell people that wheelchairs are much like bicycles. Can you imagine somebody riding a bicycle on the inside of your house, what that would do to your floors and carpets? People buy them for the scuff marks. Also, they buy them because they say that wheelchairs are damaging their carpets. A lot of people have very expensive carpets. We’ve had some museums buy them because they’ve got expensive carpeting inside the museums. We’ve had a few hospitals buy them. Clinics buy them. But mostly, it’s people that want to keep their house clean or want to protect their valuable floors or carpets.

You did say they work on pretty much any kind of manual wheelchair, is that right?

Yes, they do. We designed slippers to fit 24-inch tires, but we’ve had customers with 25-inch tires that say that they fit. We’ve had customers with 22-inch tires that say that they fit. That’s the majority of manual wheelchair tires. I don’t think they would fit on 26-inch tires. They’re probably too small for that. But to be honest with you, I don’t have my own experience with 26-inch tires, nor have I spoken to anybody that’s tried.

For the casters, they’re different. Now casters, you have to measure your casters. You have to select a size of sock that will fit your castor size. We carry socks in 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10-inch sizes, a wide range of caster sizes. That pretty much covers everybody, I think.

I like how you threw the word cover in there too, just for a little-

Yeah, you’re right. I’m being a little redundant, aren’t I?

That’s okay. That’s okay. That completely and totally works. Well, Eugene, and I do think these things are just absolutely great. Like you said, it’s something nobody really thinks of. Whereas everyone else who’s walking in the home does usually take off their shoes and change into other stuff, but an individual using a wheelchair just doesn’t always have that luxury. I love that you do have that.

Now you guys have some other pretty cool stuff available. I wanted just while we have time to be able to talk to some of those. Can we start with talking about the Mud Eaters? Tell us about those.

Well, actually that’s a good point. Thank you very much. They’re another type of tire covers that we carry. We had some people that were complaining that they had very wet tires. They wanted a solution for that. We came up with Mud Eaters because slippers and socks, honestly, they’re not water-resistant. If your wheels are very, very, very wet, water can seep through. They’re made out of textile. We came up with Mud Eaters, which are made out of neoprene.

Now, neoprene is the same material that skin divers use for wetsuits. It’s a very heavy, rubber-like fabric that water just doesn’t get through. Mud Eaters are made out of this. Imagine putting a huge rubber band on the tire of the wheelchair. That’s what Mud Eaters are. They’re like a giant rubber band that just cover the tires. We have people mostly buy them, like I say, when they have very, very wet or muddy wheelchairs. But also we have people buy them when they are taking their wheelchair into the swimming pool or sauna where they want to keep a hygienic area where there might be a lot of water around.

Mud Eaters, it’s the same concept as slippers, but since they’re a big rubber band, they need a little bit more strength than slippers to put on. They cling very tightly to the wheels. You need really normal strength to put them on. With slippers, we’ve got a video of a quadriplegic putting them on the wheelchair. They don’t require any strength and not a whole lot of manual dexterity, a little bit of manual dexterity, but not a whole lot. But with the Mud Eaters, you need normal upper body strength to put them on.

Gotcha. I could definitely see where those could fit into the needs of individuals quite often as well. As I go through some of the other things that you have available, I know the Mud Eaters can help with the wet when you’re out in the rain or things like that. I mean, I saw you guys had some other products that you carry that can assist folks that use wheelchairs when they’re out in the rain. What are some of those?

Yes, we have two very different approaches for rainy weather. One is a hands-free umbrella holder, which we call Brella Buddy. It’s basically imagine a big purse that you strap around your chest and you put an umbrella in it, if that makes sense. It holds the umbrella so you can still push the manual wheelchair. That’s one approach.

Then we’ve got another approach called Rayne Shield. It’s for the legs. The umbrella is mostly for your upper body, but you can imagine that the legs of the wheelchair user is a major issue. Even when using an umbrella, they’re going to get wet too. Rayne Shield basically just wraps around the legs of the wheelchair user and goes up to the waist. That’s for the lower body.

Very nice. Very nice. What about push rim covers? I saw those on there. Tell us about those.

Yeah, it’s one of our fun products that we have. Actually push rim covers have a very functional use too. I mean, push rim covers facilitate pushing the wheelchair. Pushing the wheelchair is more efficient when you use push rim covers. Also, it’s more comfortable for the hands to use push rim covers because push rims are usually made of aluminum, which can be very cold in the winter and quite hot in the summer. But when you have push rim covers, it’s just much more comfortable to push the wheelchair.

But you would be amazed how the push rim covers really make the wheelchair look so beautiful. When you combine it with another product we have called Seksi Spokes, which are basically wraps for the spokes, when you combine the push rim covers with Seksi Spokes, the wheelchair looks incredibly beautiful. Now, it’s my product, but I didn’t know how much of an impact it had on the look of a wheelchair until I saw a few different colors of push rim covers and Seksi Spokes combined on the wheelchair. We’ve got a really cool video on our website that shows these different color combinations. Josh, it’s just really, really beautiful.

For some people, that’s not important. Then for them, they’ll just get black push rim covers. That’s cool. But for other people, they want to make their wheelchair stand out. We carry push rim covers in seven different colors. We carry Seksi Spokes also in seven different colors. People can also get multicolor ones. You can just really personalize the look of your wheelchair and really make it look beautiful.

You stole my next question. I’ve been waiting for a whole week to be able to say Seksi Spokes, but-

It’s spelled S-E-K-S-I.

I know. I didn’t even think about it when I first was looking at it. Then I said it out loud and was like, “Oh, now I totally and completely get it.” But yeah, I do love that. It seems like with wheelchairs you’ve got a few variations, I guess, in the manual wheelchair, but there was nothing that, oh, jazz it up a little bit. It was always the plain, you got a seat, you got some wheels, you got some metal, you got some maybe leather.

Exactly.

That was it. I like that you’re giving folks the option to, I mean, you’re going to be using this thing quite often, more than likely. At least be able to personalize it a little bit and really make it your own.

Exactly. But, Josh, which color do you think is our best selling color?

Oh, I have no idea. What is it?

Take a guess. Take a guess.

Oh, I don’t have all the colors right here in front of me. Darn it.

Black, green, yellow, blue, purple, pink, red.

Ah, is red your most popular?

Black.

Is it black, huh?

Yeah, we probably sell 50% black. That’s really interesting. 50% black, and the other 50% the other colors.

All the rest of them. Huh?

Yeah.

Well, I’ll be darned.

Well, I think when it comes to wheelchair colors, it’s a very personal thing. Not everybody wants to have a colorful wheelchair. Some people want to just have an anonymous, simple wheelchair. That’s fine. We have that solution. Other people really want to make their wheelchair look cool. For them, we’ve got colored push rim covers.

Eugene, tell me about the wheelchair gloves that y’all offer.

We have a different approach to a lot of glove manufacturers in that we create different gloves for different needs of wheelchairs. We’ve got six types of gloves for adults. Three for paraplegic, people with normal hand mobility, and three types for people with tetraplegia, or people with limited hand mobility. Our bestselling glove is called Ultra-Grrrip Half Finger Glove. As the name says, it’s a half finger, so your fingers are exposed. It’s got a grip pad in the palm that facilitates the push on the wheelchair. It’s made out of really nice quality leather. There’s a ventilated back to allow a little bit of airflow to the hand.

That’s our best-selling glove. It’s been reviewed by several different reviewers. We’ve had New Mobility magazine have reviewed it. We’ve got some YouTubers that have reviewed it. If people want more information about it, they can go there. That’s a very good glove. It’s mostly for paraplegics, as I said, or people with normal hand mobility.

We also have a full-finger glove, which we call 4 Seasons Glove. That’s a glove that people can use in the winter to keep their hands a little bit warmer. Then we’ve got a glove for people with a bit of hand pain or hand discomfort, which we call Gel-Palm Glove. As the name sounds, there’s this gel padding in the palm. All of them are made of leather. All of them have a grip pad.

Now, one of the things that makes RehaDesign gloves unique is that we also have an inner lining in the glove, a textile lining. The purpose of that is so the hand never comes in contact with the leather. The reason that’s important is wheelchair users use their hands a lot and they can get quite sweaty. If a hand that is sweaty comes in contact with the leather, the dye from the leather can transfer to the hand and make the hand black. Because of that, and in fact, we had this problem when we first created our wheelchair gloves that some of our users were complaining that their hands were getting black because of the dye from the leather. But then we innovated the lining on the inside and the hand doesn’t come into contact with the leather anymore, and the complaints stopped. We never get this comment anymore.

Then, as I said, we’ve got a line of gloves for people with tetraplegia or quadriplegia, which one of them is called Gator Gloves because they open wide like the mouth of an alligator. They open 180 degrees so it’s very easy to get the hands in. Then we’ve got a glove called Strap N Roll that closes with the strap. Similar glove, but they close with the strap. They don’t open up as wide, but they’re easier to close because of the strap.

We also have a glove for children. I think that’s very unique. I don’t think there’s any other leather gloves out there designed for kids. The nice thing about this glove is it actually grows with the hand. As the child’s hand grows because of the strap, it allows the glove to adjust and grow with the hand. I’ve seen kids from three to eight or nine years old wear the same-sized glove. But after that, of course, they can transition to an extra small or a small size glove and go in that direction.

Very nice. Well, and I know you got some other accessories, lights, backpacks and those kind of things.

Yes.

We’ll definitely, as we get to the end, make sure that we tell people how to go find those. But while we’ve still at a little bit of time, I want you to, if you can, maybe tell me a story about a user or two and how these products have been able to help them maybe either in a way that you weren’t thinking of or just some stories that maybe stick with you.

Well, one recent one that sticks with me, I don’t even know why this one sticks with me, but it does, was a woman who wrote to us about wanting tire covers, wheelchair slippers, because she had a family of birds that had adopted them and was out in a birdhouse above their backyard patio, but it made the backyard patio covered with bird poop.

Oh, no.

They had this issue because their, I believe it was their child, I believe that their daughter was going out to the backyard. Then, of course, the wheelchair was becoming covered with bird poop. They didn’t really know what to do because they liked these birds out there. They didn’t want to try and get rid of the birdhouse, but they didn’t know what to do. They Googled, “Wheelchair tire covers,” and our slippers came up. They bought them. The mother wrote a story about that. We created a blog post about it. That’s on our wheelchair blog. If any of your listeners are interested, they can read that story from that mother. The title of the story is, “Wheelchair Slippers are for the Birds.” If anybody wants to Google that, they can find that story.

Oh, I love it. You really don’t think about all the uses. I mean, even as the creator or the person that’s getting them out there, it’s always amazing how people find new uses for it or things that he can help with that you maybe never considered or never really thought of.

That, and this is the reason I reached out to you, Josh. I mean, as I mentioned, we’ve had wheelchair slippers on the market for maybe 15 years, but many people still don’t know that they exist. You can imagine why. I mean, people just often don’t think about wheelchair slippers. Somehow the word just isn’t out. I mean, we’re selling them, but it’s mostly by this kind of thing that people just randomly Google to see if there’s some kind of a tire cover for a wheelchair, and then they come upon our product. But this information hasn’t spread widely within the industry that wheelchair tire covers are a thing, if that makes sense.

No, that makes total sense.

I can say that we’re not the only company that manufactures wheelchair tire covers. There are a couple others, but ours, I believe, are really very high quality. They’re made in Europe. We are the only ones that make wheelchair socks. As I mentioned, I’ve got a patent on that. If you’re looking to cover both of them, then you’re going to buy from us. But just the information that this is an option, the tire covers is an option, somehow that isn’t widely spread. I’m trying to get that word out. I really appreciate your help in getting this message to people working with wheelchair users and people who have disabilities. I really appreciate your help.

Well, definitely. Anything that can help. I mean, of course, I can understand how maybe from a provider standpoint it’s not something that’s automatically thought of. You’re so worried about seating and positioning and-

Exactly.

… and making sure folks have those kind of things that when it comes-

Exactly.

… to, or I need a ramp to get in the house and I need the doors to be big enough to get the wheelchair through, it’s like, “Oh, well I probably don’t want to ruin the carpet on the way through there.” It’s not always those things that stay front of mind. Hopefully, some folks can definitely benefit from these. Now if they do want to find out more, want to maybe read those blog posts or be able to order all the great things we talked about today for themselves, Eugene, what’s the best way for them to do that?

The best way is to Google RehaDesign. I’ll spell it. R-E-H-A, Design. Like Reha from Rehabilitation and Design. RehaDesign is the name of our company. Our website is RehaDesign.com. We’ve got a blog at WheelchairPride.com. There you can read different articles or interviews or stories that we’ve created for the past 10 or 15 years.

We will put links to all that down in the show notes. Eugene, thank you-

I appreciate it.

… so much for coming on today, telling us about all the great things at RehaDesign Wheelchair Accessories.

Well, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. I wish everybody a successful and happy 2023.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at Tech@EasterSealsCrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at RelayIndiana.com.

A special thanks to Nikol Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guest are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easter Seals crossroads, our supporting partners or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.