#mobility disabilities

we talk about mobility aids as if they're these amazing, flawless pieces of equipment, but in reality, they can be hard to use, hard to maintain, sometimes bulky or weirdly designed, sometimes uncomfortable (even if helpful), sometimes don't fit your personal style, physical spaces are often not designed for them, etc.

they are also amazing pieces of equipment. they are tools of freedom, they improve a lot of disabled peoples' quality of life, and they're often worth the frustration. but they are still frustrating.

as he now has a proper caregiver, he gave me what was left of his no-rinse instant shower sponge/towel things.

I WAS IN DISBELIEF- they work so well and let me be able to clean my body. i cannot shower or bathe, and now with these i can finally clean my body again. i can't get over how happy and excited this has made me i can't express enough just how huge this is for me it's changing my life

i am so happy i cannot describe it, i was just left in shock when i tried them and they worked and are so nice and i can finally clean my body. no rinsing, no scrubbing, no flaring/crashing, no transferring to a bath/shower, and minimal exertion while only taking 1-2 minutes. i can finally be clean again i can have clean skin

I thought there would be a difference in the walk or limp if the issue was, for example, at the hip(s) or knee(s), but I'm not so sure anymore. Do you perhaps have any terms i could try searching up for better results?

I do plan to draw the character with a mobility aid as well and depict it in other ways, too. I just intend to have them walk without a mobility aid for quite a bit as well, and I don't really want to make it look like, "Oh, they dont actually need a cane. They can walk just fine"

Thank you for the help! 😊 🙏

Hey!

The first step would be to know what your character's disability is. A limp can be caused by a billion things, among the people I know the most permanent cause is neurological (stroke, or cerebral palsy, for example). This will affect your character's gait more so than the location, since an issue in the foot could both mean "this person can't lift the foot off the ground" and "this person can't fully lay their foot on the ground". These two will result in different gaits.

You can read some basic information about different gaits here, if you want to see how they actually look like then there are a ton of presentations of each on youtube and rehab websites.

As for walking with and without a mobility aid: for me at least, my limp is way more pronounced when I'm not using my cane. My gait disorder would be closest to the "hemiplegic gait", since I have to swing it in a semicircle, and my other leg does all the work (for some people, permanently limping means that one of your legs is visibly more muscular, since you're using the muscles in it way more). But I still have the same gait when using my cane, it is overall less visible, but my knee is still stiff and my hip still has to go higher to let me swing my leg forward. If someone limps, it will probably be visible both when they are and aren't using their cane.

Here's a tutorial for drawing a character using a cane=)

Hope this helps,

I pretty much immediately put stickers on it hehehe

My disability: *disables me*

Me every single fucking time: