Doors to Greater Independence Open at Anaheim Abilities Expo

Armed with a pile of sales brochures and even more resolve, Jane McKenzie of Torrance had her eye on a tricycle.

This was not just any three-wheeler. This one operates with hand pedals so that even her 9-year-old grandson, confined to a wheelchair because of spina bifida, can ride through the neighborhood.

This bike also costs about $900.

“What the insurance won’t pay for, we will find a way to get the money,” McKenzie, 67, said Friday. “I can cook. We’ll have bake sales.”

She was not shopping at her local bike store or a nearby Kmart. Instead, she joined an estimated 13,000 people who are expected this weekend at the 18th annual Abilities Expo at the Anaheim Convention Center.

It is the largest trade show of its kind, organizers said, and unlike many others, it doesn’t cater to suppliers and manufacturers. Paraplegics and multiple sclerosis sufferers, caregivers, parents and spouses, as well as those with a variety of disabilities, said the trade show is the only way to find out what’s available and see it under one roof.

“This is the best way to get information about products and services,” said Bonnie Detloff, who traveled to Orange County from Saginaw, Mich., looking for help for her 23-year-old daughter injured in a car crash several years ago.

Browsing along the aisles, people in wheelchairs easily outnumbered pedestrians 2 to 1. Dozens of wheelchairs and products geared to mobility were displayed. But the largest crowds formed around voice-activated computers and sports-related equipment, including wheelchairs with angled wheels to play tennis and basketball, and long-range tricycles for adults.

“It’s like taking mountain-bike technology and putting it in a wheelchair,” said Chris Veatch, a salesman for Shadow sports and recreational products.

The Abilities Expo was started in the early 1980s by Richard Wooten, an Encinitas resident who drafted the state’s barrier-free public access laws that later became the model for the federal Americans With Disabilities Act. He used a wheelchair for four decades after polio paralyzed his legs.

He and his wife, Pat, invested their life savings to establish the trade fair to demonstrate useful goods and services. Although Wooten died in 1995, his widow still works at the show.

People with disabilities, she said Friday, still are underrepresented in the workplace because full-time employment often jeopardizes health care and other government subsidies they receive.

“A lot of people would love to be on the payroll, paying taxes and supporting their families, but they can’t,” she said.

Those who do work, in most instances, are helped on the job by special tools such as an eye-operated computer that responds solely to a blink. For nearly $20,000, it can type, turn on the stereo and dial the telephone. It is especially popular with people diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, said Nancy R. Cleveland, a registered nurse with Fairfax, Va.-based LC Technologies, which makes the computers.

Orlando Salvato of Claremont was guiding his wheelchair through the minivan section, hoping to replace his current vehicle, which has a chair lift, for one with a ramp. He’s not good at maintenance, he said, and the lift malfunctions. But the $40,000 price stopped him.

Salvato, 73, said there is only one thing he can’t find the answer to at the expo: “How to get out of your chair and walk again.”