What Are Some of the Best Online Resources for Wheelchair Users?

Living in a wheelchair can sometimes feel like a lonely experience. Chances are, the people you grew up with and your family members probably don’t have any significant handicaps, and they don’t understand what being wheelchair-bound is like. That can be frustrating and isolating.

But fortunately, we live in a time where the world is smaller than ever, thanks to the internet. Now, you can find countless resources online to help you manage your wheelchair-bound life, and even locate online communities of other wheelchair users. Through these communities, you can commiserate about your difficulties and read stories from other wheelchair users.

If you’re interested in some online resources for wheelchair users, allow us to point out some of our favorites:

Apparelyzed Forums

Officially titled the Apparelyzed Spinal Cord Injury and Cauda Equina Syndrome Support Forum, this is a place where sufferers of spinal cord injuries (who are often wheelchair users) can share their experiences. Like any online forum, it’s a mixed bag of useful and meaningless posts, but you can find a variety of topics being discussed here. Such as, “Do you let people sit in your wheelchair?” or “All terrain powered chairs” (that sounds fun!).

The Disabled Travel Guide

This is a page from the 1800Wheelchair.com site, and it provides a helpful listing of travel-related resources for wheelchair users. Additionally, there is information for blind, deaf and generally handicapped travelers.

Top 20 Most Livable U.S. Cities for Wheelchair Users

This article comes to us from the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation website, and it’s a handy breakdown of what makes a city “livable” for a wheelchair user. The good news: there are plenty of great cities (like Miami and Denver) on the list. The bad news? None of them are in California! Come on Bay Area, you’re better than that.

Living as a Wheelchair User – An Overview

If you’ve lived as a wheelchair user for any stretch of time, then most of this will probably be review. Nonetheless, there’s still plenty of solid information on this page, brought to you by the National Spinal Cord Injury Association. You’ll find great discussion topics on this site, such as how often you need to perform maintenance on your chair and how to integrate into your community as a new wheelchair user.