Our first column topic addresses the basic relationships between sexuality, accessibility and mobility. This chapter introduces four basic concepts key to understanding what basic types of potentially beneficial products are available to people with accessibility needs and mobility challenges. The next three columns we will review specific products that can meet these needs.
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How does physical mobility affect humans? Most of us will experience bouts of limited mobility during our lifetime on at least a temporary basis. We may strain or break a muscle, tendon or bone that requires recovery times ranging from a few days to weeks, months or years. We may suffer a life-altering injury or illness that may affect our mobility on a more long-term basis (stroke, arthritis, diabetes, circulatory illness, accident, etc.). We may have been born with mobility limitations due to illness or bodily structure differences (such missing or inoperable body parts, accelerated or slow growth, etc).
The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability is a great introduction to and resource on this and the related topics of sexuality and wellness.
Whether temporary, long-term or permanent, people who experience mobility limitations in particular report numerous challenges in giving and receiving sexual pleasure including difficulty in reaching their own or a partner's body for contact, positioning their own or a partner's body, and in controlling or holding toys and pleasure products.
Numerous products exist for improving the reach of those with limited mobility, especially high-tech remote contact toys that eliminate many reach-imitations, positioning aids to increase accessibility of specific body parts and reduce the strain of holding a position and ergonomically designed toys to provide pleasurable hands-on sexual stimulation with less difficulty and bodily strain.
Remote access products can potentially benefit persons with multiple types of mobility limitations. As long as a person has a means of accessing the controls of a remote controlled pleasure product (including vibrators, e-stim tools, and even erotic media) or even a voice-controlled remote-controlled smart phones can potentially allow many persons a vastly improved range of connection and control.
Extended reach products potentially benefit persons with limited mobility of the arms and hands by extending the reach of fingers, arms (and even legs)to allow for enhanced contact and stimulation opportunities.
Positioning aids allow for intentional maneuvering of the body to allow access and provide support to the bodies of people with mobility challenges and their partners.
Pleasure products with ergonomic grips reduce the many difficulties people with limited mobility can face when holding and attempting to control sex toys they wish to use on themselves or a partner. Such products are designed with attention to weight, grip and electronic controls.
In following chapters, we will recommend specific products for remote access and reach to make sexual pleasure more accessible to folks who face mobility challenges.
Attn: Educators and Care-providers: If you would like to present your research as part of this column (in a guest column or cross-post), as a guest presenter in a public workshop through our Passion 101 Classes, please email us.
