Android & Chill
One of the web’s longest-running tech columns, Android & Chill is your Saturday discussion of Android, Google, and all things tech.
I’ve been in a wheelchair on and off for about 20 years, and now I’m a full-time user. I’m also interested in staying healthy so I can live long enough to become a burden on my kids. Like many folks, I use a smartwatch as a wearable fitness tracker.
Unfortunately, I don’t see this changing any time soon, if ever.
We’re built different
The difficulty in creating accurate and useful fitness trackers for wheelchair users stems from a combination of technological limitations, fundamental differences in movement, and a historical lack of dedicated research and market focus.
The core technology in most commercial wearables is designed for the “able-bodied” population, which creates fundamental inaccuracies when applied to wheelchair use. I’m talking smartwatches here, because something as small as a smart ring or smart earrings simply doesn’t have the space to fit anything more inside.
Wearable trackers primarily use an accelerometer to count steps by detecting specific motions involved in walking or running. That data is what’s used to calculate other features, like calorie counting or a sort of body battery measurement.
When you use a manual wheelchair, the arm and torso movements are different from they are when walking or running. This usually leads to either an overestimation or an underestimation of “steps” and calories burned. A simple accelerometer is not designed to measure these.
Different tech is needed
The software algorithms that determine energy expenditure use a combination of data such as heart rate, height, and weight, and accelerometer readings. To make matters worse, all this is designed with lower-body movement in mind.
To push a wheelchair, you rely on your upper body. Usually, this is less demanding than “normal” leg-based movements. This means that even if a wearable underestimates your number of pushes, the result can still be overestimated because your body isn’t working as hard to move forward.
It’s difficult to reasonably assess any sort of fitness goal when things are both over- and underestimated all at the same time. Garmin, to its credit, does explain how it tries to compensate for this and use a different software algorithm when you use Wheelchair Mode on one of the company’s watches.
Apple, Samsung, and Google are all working on making it better, too, even if they aren’t quite there yet. Even with my Garmin, the readings and calculations aren’t very accurate because of differences in movement and the limitations of “normal” sensors in gauging it.
Modern medicine isn’t likely to change how people in wheelchairs use their bodies to move, but technology could be built that caters to it. The University of Pittsburgh’s Human Engineering Research Lab is working on how to build a fitness tracking system for people with ambulatory issues, but it would probably lead to an entirely new product category of devices. Their research involves wearable tech on the wrist and face (to monitor breathing and oxygen intake) as well as tech on the wheelchair itself. Think of a smart chair, like we’ve seen Google explore smart shoe insoles.
The market isn’t there
Maybe a bigger issue is the market itself and historical research into the problem. I’m not complaining that people without any issues walking around don’t think about wheelchair users, and I never want to sound demanding. The fact is that not as much research goes into wheelchair fitness tracking. This can change and probably will, but it’s unlikely to catch up.
The market simply isn’t there to justify the enormous costs. There are more people with ambulatory issues than you probably realize, but the number is still dwarfed by those without any. And, to be frank, many people in a wheelchair just don’t care about their fitness. For every wheel-basketball player (those guys are amazing and my heroes), there will be dozens (or more) users who aren’t interested in seeing how active they can be. To be fair, it is tough to give a damn when you live in a world that wasn’t designed to accommodate you.
In any case, the number of people who would buy a costly fitness-tracking system will never be high. Any company willing to do the research isn’t going to profit from it, and companies that actually build the devices would probably lose money. For now, it’s in the hands of forward-looking thinktanks like the University of Pittsburgh.
For now, I’ll stick with my Garmin
I’m not bitter. I’ve learned how to use the information my Garmin watch gives me, and even though I can’t trust it at face value, it is mostly consistent. It’s useful to help in some ways; I lift weights to keep my upper body strong, and it can help me there.
If things ever change, I would try to buy into a better way, though I’m in the minority. I’m just happy that big tech hasn’t forgotten about me, even if they’re taking a long time to produce mediocre results.
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