Wheelchair Users in Pop Culture


Jason StreetThe creative folks over at RollX vans have outdone themselves — they marked the cancellation of Ironside by putting together a tribute to wheelchair users in pop culture present and past (when you click that link it might appear tiny on your browser, but just click on the image and it’ll zoom right in).

Ironside had such low ratings we had a feeling it would get cancelled,” says Elise Schwartz, who co-wrote and designed the tribute along with Tim Snyder. “So we wanted to go off of that and create something for the community that highlighted the different characters in pop culture who use wheelchairs.”

Schwartz and Snyder found 12 wheelers ranging from The X-Men’s Professor X to Forrest Gump‘s Lt. Dan and even D.C. Comic’s Batgirl/Oracle.

“We brainstormed all the different options we could think of, and did some research to see if there was anybody we were missing. Then we cut it down to the most well-known characters in today’s pop culture,” says Schwartz. That’s a hard job to do, considering how many wheelchair users there have been in movies and on TV.

It’s fun to think of who else could have been included — I’m partial to Jimmy Brooks from Degrassi — but they served up some characters that aren’t usually thought of, such as Family Guy’s Super Cop Joe Swanson and Friday Night Light’s Jason Street.

What do you think of their list? Who would you have added or deleted?


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