A Successful Wheelchair Obstacle Course Event

A Wheelchair Obstacle Course event was held in Post Falls on May 21st with city personnel invited to attend. After setting up the course on a beautiful spring day, staff from different departments including City Administration and Community Development had a chance to try it out. The course requires a person to navigate through a door and around tight corners on unfriendly surfaces. They got to experience familiar barriers like opening a door on a slope, items in the pathway, overhanging shrubs, pot holes and cracks in the sidewalk. Just getting through the first few can be exhausting.

The Obstacle Course was designed and built by Washington State University Mechanical Engineering students. They compared the importance of different design factors including safety, durability, and portability. They designed a mix of commonly found obstacles people who use wheelchairs encounter everyday. There is one panel with truncated domes – an important community feature for the blind to be aware of entering traffic. But these and especially the cobble stone pavers can be very uncomfortable to people in wheelchairs, so should be used in a limited fashion.

“Having the City of Post Falls staff come out to experience it was wonderful,” said Mark Leeper, Executive Director of DAC NW. “They had lots of questions and DAC NW is able to help provide some answers. This experience can help prioritize projects in their City Transition Plan. And I feel the dialogue we had will help build a relationship in the future.”

Community members were also present at the event. Karen Krueger, a consumer and advocate from DAC NW was there and pointed out difficulties she experiences around the community and with her service animal in the past. She pointed out that although it’s nice for businesses to allow dogs inside, it presents a problem if they are aggressive in any way to a service dog, who is trained not to respond and fight back. Perhaps it would be better if only service dogs are allowed in businesses to help keep them safe.