Details

29 mins, 1994

This is the story of an attempt to design a new kind of wheelchair. It explores the issue of mass-manufacturing for the disabled and questions the capacity of private firms to cater for such needs.

Physiotherapist Pauline Pope is working on SAM – a wheelchair to use with children with cerebral palsy. But they can only produce SAM on a costly, one-off basis.

She needs someone to manufacture the new chair in large quantities. Working with a senior designer for the leading wheelchair manufacturer Sunrise Medical, she produces a prototype for the new SAM.

Eventually, there’s one last problem. Sunrise Medical won’t actually go ahead and manufacture SAM unless it can prove it will make enough money on it – and that is by no means certain.