Projeto conceitual de cadeira de rodas para prática de basquete: para maior acessibilidade ao esporte

Abstract

The practice of sports is a big integrating part in the social life, and relevant for a good quality of life, in people with and without any kind of disabilities. Bearing this in mind, the access to exercising shows itself fundamental in the well-being, physically and psychologically in wheelchair users. Into the categories of sports practiced by wheelchair users, basketball is among the more popular, even being part of the Paralympics. One restriction is the elevated cost of the wheelchairs specialized used for this practice, characterizing itself as a barrier, a factor that difficults the access, for a big part of this population, to the sport. The objective of this work is to develop a wheelchair design for basketball practice that is more viable economically than the options available in the market, by utilizing concepts of value analysis in order to identify improvement opportunities, facilitating access to the sport. At the end of the development process no cost reduction was achieved, however the developed design has a greater cost benefit ratio compared with the original design evaluated.