A Chat with Dr. Jaimie Borisoff: On the Forefront of Wheelchair Design

Accessibility affects many people, and even one day, perhaps yourself. In this Encouraging Abilities Podcast, we connected with Dr. Jaimie Borisoff who runs a development program at BCIT with an eye on designing better wheelchairs and other adaptive equipment that helps people stay included.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

A Chat with Dr. Jaimie Borisoff: On the Forefront of Wheelchair Design

 

00:04 Welcome to another episode of our Encouraging Abilities podcast. I am your host, Evan Kelly, Communications Manager here at DDA. Now, over the past few episodes, we've been talking about accessibility, and not just for people with developmental disabilities, but for anyone really who needs adaptive technology or even big changes to the world around them. Now, the thing is that it's likely at some point going to include each and every one of us as we get older. So it's not just people who have been injured or people with developmental disabilities.

00:34 can affect us all. Now we've talked with accessibility authors, lawyers and design consultants and today we're talking with Dr. Jamie Borosoff. He directs research out at BCIT and UBC here in the Lower Mainland. Now he has one of those resumes and levels of education that are really off the charts. You got to listen to some of this. He's the former Canadian research chair, rehabilitation engineering design at BCIT, adjunct professor, Department of Occupational Science and

01:04 Director of Make Plus Applied Research Group. That's again a BCIT. He's got a PhD in neuroscience and a Bachelor of Science in engineering physics. I mean, it's just quite a list. So Dr. Borisov focuses his research on people with spinal cord injuries and other mobility issues. One focus of his work is on expanding people's ability to interact more fully with others, the environment and the world. In the long term, Dr. Borisov wants to merge current models

01:34 wheelchairs, for example, with newer technologies like robotics in order to increase the ways in which technology can improve the lives of people with spinal cord injuries. So thank you for joining us today, Doctor. Yeah, it's a pleasure, Evan. It's great to be here. So what got you interested in this kind of work and research?

01:54 I'll make no bones about it. This is a lot of this coming from my own personal experiences. I am a wheelchair user myself. I have a spinal cord injury from a car accident over 30 years ago. And really ever since that event, and kind of, I guess, due to the nature of

02:16 the way I think about things and, you know, being kind of an engineer at heart, I always started thinking about problem solving, various aspects of my life that were more difficult than it was before the injury. Now, were you an engineer first before your accident? No, I was in first year university actually, or just after that. So I was mulling over at that time, what exactly to do, what exactly to major in. And I had a few thoughts about that. And...

02:45 I did migrate towards engineering in the end, and that was the right decision. But I'd always been, you know, someone that tinkered and took things apart. I always took my bike apart or radios apart and that sort of thing as a kid. So it was kind of a natural place for me to go. So that was 30 years ago when you started your education. And, you know, obviously things have, you know, changed in that time. How much better, in terms of schools, in terms of students accessing schools, how much better has it gotten?

03:15 Great question. It's gotten a lot better in some ways. And in some ways actually we're a bit further behind. Let me explain what I mean by that. If we go back over 30 years ago.

03:30 This was shortly after Rick Hansen's Man in Motion tour and all the visibility and awareness he brought to spinal c