As people age, their mobility often decreases and many have difficulty at some point in their lives with their hips, knees or ankles. Many elderly people, or younger people due to injury or disease, are confined to a wheelchair for at least a period of time to move from place to place. It is common for people using wheelchairs to have difficulty with lifting or raising one or more of their legs for any length of time due to age, injury or disease. It is also common for people using wheelchairs, if they are able, to use one or more of their legs and feet to propel themselves along using their heels or bottoms of the foot to scoot or move themselves forward.
Manually-operated wheelchairs, in other words those requiring the user to exert force to move the chair, have not significantly changed in design or technology over the years. Devices used to support a person's foot or feet, commonly called pedals, are heavy metal plates which are slid into receptacles attached to the wheel chair frame by the front wheels. These pedals may be rotated out of the way or removed if, for example, a user is going to stand up or otherwise exit the wheelchair.
Wheelchair pedals have many disadvantages in use and safely supporting one or more of a user's feet while seated in a wheelchair or exiting therefrom. These pedals are typically not interchangeable between wheelchair manufacturers and with the different size wheelchairs causing difficulties in use for the facilities that employ them. When installed, the pedals usually extend a bit outwardly and cause damage to facility walls, door frames and other equipment. For users, the pedal designs allow for a foot to slip off of a pedal allowing the leg and foot to drop down toward the floor. If the wheelchair is in motion, the foot can be drawn by contact with the floor under the wheelchair or into the front wheels causing injury to the foot, ankle and knees. When only one pedal is used, for example only one leg of a user is injured, propelling the chair by the user's good leg often causes bruises or abrasions when the good foot comes in repeated contact with the heavy metal pedal. The standard wheelchair pedals are also simply not usable in situations where a user has an injury to the heel or foot and must avoid pressure that a pedal would provide. Use of pedals is also known to cause or contribute to contractures and edema if they are used too often