Not all of your seating & mobility clients can be elite wheelchair basketball players who bring home world championship and Paralympic medals the way Paul Schulte has in his illustrious career.
But thanks to Invacare Corp., at least they can now go along for the ride when Schulte goes handcycling with friends on a sunny, blue-sky Florida day.
They can also accompany para-triathlete Charlie Mosbrook on a visit to the Cleveland Botanical Gardens and to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where he (and they) get up close and personal with dinosaurs.
These adventures are possible thanks to Invacare’s new virtual reality experiences, created to showcase the independent mobility and freedom offered by wheelchairs.
Schulte uses an Invacare Top End Force RX handcycle to race along the shores of Clearwater, Fla. Mosbrook uses a pair of power wheelchairs — the ROVI X3 power chair with Motion Concepts Ultra Low Maxx power positioning, and the Invacare TDX SP2 power chair — on his adventures.
“We want everyone — providers, therapists, and most importantly, consumers, to experience what it’s like to be in an Invacare product,” said Maegan Hurtado, Invacare’s digital marketing manager. “We want people to be inspired and know that they truly can do anything they put their mind to.”
The specially created footage makes it possible for virtual reality users to not only look straight ahead, but also to the sides, up and down — for example, just as if they were racing alongside Schulte.
The videos at invacare.com/VR can be viewed in the traditional method via laptop or computer. But the most robust experiences come when the films are viewed using a virtual reality headset, such as Google Cardboard’s. Consumers can load the virtual reality footage onto their smartphones via a YouTube app, then fit their smartphones into the viewer and enjoy the virtual reality experience.
