Time to ReStock

I asked recently why a professional illustration of a person in a wheelchair showed not a person in a modern wheelchair, but rather, a person in a 1970s era folding hospital wheelchair, of a type that is not even used by hospitals anymore.

The answer came back: we were working from stock photos.

A quick google search of “stock wheelchair photos” reveals that, yes, the overwhelming majority of stock wheelchair photos are precisely that same style of decades out-of-date chair.

I even found one full page of photos of people in wheelchairs with basketballs and tennis rackets, and only three of the photos were of actual sports chairs.

I am no great shakes as a photographer, and I do not know how to get stock photo sources to update their supply, but it is a great disservice to wheelchair users everywhere to have rickety, hard-to-push, unwieldy 1970s chairs as the most widely available visible image. It is as if all the stock photos of automobiles were of cars from the 1970s, with no shoulder belts or crumple zones or airbags or modern infant safety seats.

In the meantime, I am going to illustrate this post with two photos of an actual wheelchair user: one in an everyday chair (it’s a Tilite Aero) and one in an actual basketball chair (made by Eagle Sportschairs). If you’d like to be put in touch with people who can provide you with better images of modern chairs, feel free to contact me.

Let’s work together to re-stock the images of chairs and wheelchair users .