Photos: This Solar Powered Wheelchair Gives the Disabled a Chance to Swim in the Ocean
The Seatrac can operate up to 30 times a day on solar power alone.
A solar-powered chair is allowing the wheelchair-bound a chance to swim, unaided, in the Greek sea. But without additional government assistance to promote the device’s upkeep and accessibility, it has suffered from vandalism and proven difficult for wheelchair-goers to get to.
Created in 2008, the Seatrac can operate up to 30 times a day on solar power alone, moving a chair up and down a fixed track into the water. “It was unreal,” Lefteris Theofilou, paralyzed from the waist down, told Reuters of his first time in the device. “It makes you feel free and able to do things you could not imagine you could do on your own.”
Because the country is nearly always sunny, the device can be installed without an electric line. This makes it easily removable at the end of the beach-going season.
