When expats add to the DR

PICHARDO

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May 15, 2003
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Santiago de Los 30 Caballeros
Ralf_David_Hotchkiss.jpg

The 2003 Kilby Laureate



Ralf David Hotchkiss


Distinguished Research Scientist and Technical Director of Whirlwind Wheelchair International at San Francisco State University and is a consultant to wheelchair manufacturers in developing countries throughout the world.

He has been a designer and inventor of wheeled mobility devices since the late 1950's working both with high and low levels of technology.

Mr. Hotchkiss has established a network of wheelchair builders in over 35 shops in 25 developing countries and holds regular courses on the San Francisco State University campus and in other countries to train new groups to build and manufacture the Whirlwind wheelchair.

The Hotchkiss wheelchairs have been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

[h=1]MacArthur Foundation Honors Achievement [/h]

The MacArthur Foundation of Chicago awarded prizes totaling $8.3 million in 1989 to 29 MacArthur Fellows.
The fellowships, frequently referred to as the ''genius'' awards, were established to give people the freedom to pursue accomplishments in the arts, sciences or community affairs without having to produce a creative work or even to account for their time to the foundation. The five-year awards range from $30,000 to $75,000 annually.
''We believe in the power of the individual to contribute to American life,'' said Adele Simmons, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Winners are identified by nominators around the country whose anonymity is safeguarded. The foundation does not accept applications or recommendations from any other source.
The list this year included Ralf David Hotchkiss, a California engineer who lost the use of his legs in a motorcycle accident. He devotes himself to helping disabled people, particularly those in developing countries, build their own wheelchairs using locally available, low-cost materials. He said he intends to use the prize money to develop improved types of wheelchairs and to expand a worldwide network of ''wheelchair rider-builders.''



[video=youtube;I6Qbx_3t-bU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Qbx_3t-bU[/video]

[video=youtube;YFe2wcsPaHg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFe2wcsPaHg[/video]

The SD METRO was designed with the disabled as center piece for mobility and ease of access to all areas.

Built-for, not upgraded-to...


[h=4]FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010[/h][h=2]Wheelchair Commute[/h]
Wheelchair_comute.jpg

Ralf Hotchkiss demonstrates how the gap between BART trains and platforms may be difficult for some wheelchairs.


By J.J. Barrow
Ralf Hotchkiss is a world traveler, a co-founder of an international nonprofit organization and a MacArthur Genius Award winner.
On this fall evening, however, he’s waiting at a San Francisco State University bus stop like everyone else except for one visible difference: Hotchkiss is in a wheelchair. And when the shuttle comes, that difference becomes a divide. The driver asks Hotchkiss to wait for the next shuttle to BART and we watch as everyone else piles onboard and the shuttle leaves.
So begins an evening on public transportation with Hotchkiss – one of the 146,000 disabled or senior passengers who ride Muni every day, and one of 32,760 on BART according to data from 2008.
The 62-year-old Hochkiss has used a wheelchair since a motorcycle accident his freshman year at Oberlin College in Ohio. It was an accident that not only put him in a wheelchair, it gave him a career. Nowadays, he rides public transportation from the point of view of an expert – since 1989, he’s taughtwheelchair design at SF State and run Whirlwind Wheelchair International, an organization that helps people across the globe build and obtain safe, reliable wheelchairs.
In the next three hours, we’ll encounter the idiosyncrasies of the city’s public transportation system – from out-of-place elevators to luggage in the wheelchair space. Throughout it all, Hotchkiss remains largely unperturbed: Public transportation is “all we’ve damn well got,” he says.

http://blog.sfgate.com/transportation/2010/12/