Considerations

We originally designed the Getabout Buggy due to wanting something for our daughter. To us it was normal to take her for a ‘walk’ down the seafront at Surfers, but we could not go on the beach as the chair just would bog immediately.

choosing a wheelchair is very personal, many people think its just a case of picking one up from the supplier and using it, but you soon become aware that in many cases you cant use it in its standard form. You may find that as the person gets tired they find it hard to sit up comfortably, or they slip to one side of the seat, it may be the feet start to cross over. All these conditions are taken into account when the chair is configured.

In our case we saw all of these, and then had the added issue of the frame from a spinal fusion, which meant that it was very easy for the skin to become damaged by pressure.

We thought ours to be an extreme case and made the Getabout initially without the options, as after all no one would need those things. After we launched it became more and more obvious that what we thought no-one would be interested in or need was in fact far more common than we thought. We then decided that as these items were commonly used with wheelchairs, why should they not be possible to fit on a Beach Chair. That was a major change in our thinking, first it was inclusion, allowing the whole family to go to the beach, rather than one person staying with the wheelchair user by the beach and the rest being on the beach which was our original aim.

So then came the change, to make simple to fit parts that fulfilled those needs and allowed far better seating capability and comfort. Its common that when you are on an uneven surface and being moved around that the muscles have to compensate more, and that means more energy is used, causing tiredness which just compounds the problem.

So when considering a beach chair, consider your wheelchair and what you need so you can ensure it is really suited to your needs.