As Sovereign Medical Supply founder Dana Mazer worked to help military veterans with their wheelchair needs, he saw that veterans with ALS experience a rapid decline in their ability to operate chairs. A person might begin with a traditional joystick chair yet quickly lose wrist strength or finger dexterity.
An independent dealer working with physically-disabled veterans, Sovereign Medical helps a multitude of wheelchair providers and other medical suppliers, serving end-users of a variety of physical abilities, especially those suffering from ALS.
“That’s when we discovered Tolt’s Ability Drive®,” Mazer says. “I saw them at a booth and just matched the technology to the needs I was seeing.”
Sovereign connected with Tolt Technologies about four years ago, bringing Ability Drive® to its users. This is a drive-control interface that enables people to drive a powered wheelchair with their eyes.
For people in need, nothing is more important.
“It’s been life-changing” — inside the user experience
Melissa Kelbley was stuck. The 34-year-old was born with type-2 spinal muscular atrophy, which causes muscle weakness and only gets worse as time goes on. She’s been in a wheelchair since she was four years old, but usage was growing more difficult. Either she couldn’t reach the controls, they were too hard to use for long periods of time or she was frustrated at not being able to do anything else while she was moving from place to place.
Battling with her previous chairs, Kelbley didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t work, travel or even go grocery shopping. She couldn’t move. She needed a solution.
Kelbley reached out to her chair provider and was invited to try Ability Drive®.
“I started using it and I didn’t want to leave. It was so empowering,” she says. Kelbley started using Ability Drive® in her day-to-day life in September of 2021. She was able to control her new eye-tracking chair for about 20 minutes at a time. Today, she can get through a whole day in her chair.
“I’m able to control my chair in and out of everywhere using just my eyes,” she says. “I don’t have to worry about not having enough muscle strength that day.”
Tolt has also been an incredibly easy partner to work with. “They’re always there, even at 6 o’clock in the morning,” she says. Any issues she has, Tolt is there with the solution.
“It’s allowed me to be more independent at work,” Kelbley says, “Not having to worry about if my hand is positioned perfectly — it’s been life-changing.”
Top 3 benefits of Ability Drive®
For veterans and non-veterans alike, most Ability Drive® users gain a host of benefits, top among them:
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- Safety and ease of use. The chair is intuitive, with clients able to drive in under a minute.
- Compatibility. Tolt has designed Ability Drive® to be compatible with existing equipment in both power chairs and eye-gaze devices used for speech.
- Valuable for people with a range of ailments. Kelbley has spinal muscular atrophy, while many of the veterans who Mazer works with have ALS. The chair is also invaluable for people with cerebral palsy. For patients with degenerative diseases who can’t move but are using a speech device for their powered wheelchair, Ability Drive® creates another path to independence.
“The Ability Drive® works instantly,” Mazer says. “If veterans want to pursue another specialty controller, they can do it, but at least they’re not left stranded and they have something that we know they can use.”
Ability Drive® gave Mazer’s clients the power to get out of bed every day. That’s been great for them, and great for Sovereign.
“I’ve never had a bad outcome,” Mazer says. “It takes users from being fully dependent to having a decent amount more independence. It’s just an exciting product, and the users are excited about it.”
He smiles.
“There is nothing better than that.”
This article is sponsored by Tolt Technologies. To learn more about how eye-gaze wheelchairs can improve an individual’s life, visit tolttechnologies.com.