Magic Mobility
Choosing your seating
The Ideal Seating Solution is Different for Every Body
Magic Mobility powerchairs offer everything you need to make the most of your life; to go wherever and do whatever possible in line with your personal needs and life goals. An individually tailored seating solution is an essential part of maximising your freedom of choice as a wheelchair user.
When it comes to your powerchair, there are several elements covered under the banner of ‘seating’. During assessment, we take into account all powerchair seating elements and thoroughly assess your needs across four key areas of consideration:
1. Support & Pressure Care
Feeling supported for as long as possible is essential for the pursuit of everyday activities that involve extended periods of powerchair use, such as working, shopping or socialising. Apart from well-fitted padding and appropriate arm, leg and head rests, this may also require the ability to adjust your posture or recline to get relief, or to elevate your lower legs to experience optimal support all day long.
2. Health & Safety Considerations
Maintaining postural alignment is essential to minimising fatigue and reducing postural deterioration. You may require additional postural supports such as lateral supports or other padding, straps and/or an appropriate headrest to suit your specific needs and posture. Managing pressure care is also vital to minimising pain and potential pressure injuries or blood flow issues, especially if you are spending significant amounts of time in your chair. This usually involves using tilt or recline to more easily adjust your position, or to provide a more comfortable angle for a period of rest.
3. Usability & Daily Living Needs
Your ability to reach things, undertake daily living activities, fit under tables and navigate sloping terrains depends on the ability to raise or lower your chair, to tilt it forward or backwards, or raise your legs to help your footplate to clear obstacles. If you have limited arm strength or poor hand dexterity you may also require specially adapted arm rests or other enabling supports to be added to your chair.
4. Transferring In & Out of your powerchair
If you have the ability to self-transfer, you may require seating with specific types of arm and leg rests, or power options to assist with transfers. While the ability to tip the chair forwards, (known as anterior tilt), can be built-in to the Magic 360, on other bases it requires an additional powered unit and hinged footplate (known specifically as transfer tilt) to be added.
Lateral transfers, such as shifting sideways from your chair onto a bed, requires armrests that fold up and out of the way and – for many – the addition of a power lift function allowing you to align the seat height with your mattress, couch or chair. For assisted transfers involving a sling and hoist, the ability to tilt the chair may also be an important consideration for you.
KEY SEATING SYSTEMS
Three key seating systems provide the framework to begin selecting your ideal Magic Mobility seating solution. Discover more about these systems here and then contact your local agent to book in a powerchair seating assessment.
Magic MPS Seating
Our customers often describe Magic MPS Seating as being like a very comfortable bucket seat in a luxury car. With fully adjustable depth and width and backrests made to measure for every user, MPS seating is most appropriate for people with reasonably good muscle tone and some movement control, or who use their powered wheelchair for only part of their day.
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Magic Mobility bases are designed to accommodate practically any seating solution.
Just ask your local Magic Mobility agent how.
Magic Rehab Seating
Comprised of multiple adjustable elements and attached to backrest canes, Magic Rehab Seating provides users with more options for tailorable support, from backrest size and shape to varying headrests and lateral trunk supports, lumbar support among many others. More suitable for people who spend extended time in their powerchair, require trunk support or have lower muscle tone or reduced movement control.
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Magic Mobility bases are designed to accommodate practically any seating solution.
Just ask your local Magic Mobility agent how.
Complex & Aftermarket Seating
Seating is vital to the usability of your powerchair – especially over long periods and across rough or uneven terrain. If required, Magic seating solutions can be further tailored for your needs, either with an individually designed and built solution, or combined with the myriad after-market seating systems and components available from either Sunrise Medical’s Jay Wheelchair Seating range, or any other specialist seating provider.
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Magic Mobility bases are designed to accommodate practically any seating solution.
Just ask your local Magic Mobility agent how.
Magic MPS Seating
Leonie lives with her parents on their rural property in South Australia. She uses her Extreme X8 to maintain her property, go camping, care for her horses and enjoy the world outside her doorstep.
Able to self-transfer from her indoor manual chair, Leonie spends only part of each day in her X8’s MPS seating, which is fitted with lift and tilt, enabling her to get on and off her horse or self-transfer into her car.
Magic Rehab Seating
Semi-retired to a beachside town, Tim uses his Magic 360 Off-road to move easily from indoors to outdoors, meeting with friends and enjoying his local amenities.
Spending most of the day in his chair, Tim’s Rehab seating keeps him comfortable all day. His lift and tilt allows him to wriggle and reposition himself, to elevate and see his way through standing crowds, or simply recline to comfortably enjoy the views.
Complex & Aftermarket Seating
Unable to control his energetic arm movements, Xabian’s chair and controller have been specially tailored to allow him to steer using the joystick with his foot and his toes. Special side padding was also fitted to his chair to protect his ever-moving arms from injury. Now empowered to enjoy independent indoor and outdoor mobility for the first time in his life, Xabian is thriving at school and loves his Sunset Red Magic 360 Urban.
TAKE CHARGE & BUILD YOUR SUPPORT TEAM
Find out more about how you, your clinician and your assistive technology practitioner (ATP) should work with your Magic Mobility dealer to achieve the ideal seating solution for your current and future needs.
1. UNDERSTAND
Understand who is involved at each step, and what steps should be taken to ensure an ideally tailored seating outcome is achieved.
2. DISCOVER
Discover what support is available from your local dealer and the Magic Mobility team to help you get the provisioning process right
3. CLARIFY
Clarify what should be considered and assessed to ensure all bases are covered for optimal comfort, safety and usability of your chair
Seating Assessment & Selection
Users often ask us to provide clear information stepping out what exactly is involved in the seating selection and assessment process. To clarify who and what is involved at each step, please click to expand the fields below:
Who is involved in the seating assessment and fitment process?
For most adult users, your primary seating provision team consists of yourself, an AT practitioner or clinician – typically an Occupational Therapist or Physiotherapist – and the powerchair expert at your local Magic Mobility dealership. In combination, the goal of this process is to provide a thorough assessment in order to specify the modular seating components that will best meet your medical and functional needs.
With children or users with limited cognitive abilities, a parent, guardian or other primary carer may also need to be involved. In preparing for the provisioning process, it is also important to consider the needs and advice of others in your support network – your carer, doctor, support workers or others.
Your local Magic Mobility accredited agent will work with you and your support team in specifying, designing and adapting powerchair seating and other assistive technologies to maximise your independence and quality of life.
Click here find your nearest Magic Mobility agent. Ready to trial? Book a seating assessment or trial in your local area.
How can I be sure my powerchair will be suited to my needs?
The assessment process begins with understanding what you currently do in your everyday life and visualising everything you may want to do in the future with your powered mobility. At this stage, it is important to think about how changes in your circumstances and capabilities may affect your needs over the next five to seven years or more (the typical life cycle of a powerchair). Whether due to regaining skills and abilities after an injury, or declining abilities due to a progressive condition such as MS or MND, we work with you and your support team to consider and cater for all possible outcomes. We recommend that you think about this and prepare before your initial assessment session by using our User Needs checklist.
What is involved in the assessment process?
The ideal next step is for your AT practitioner or clinician to undertake a MAT Assessment, compiling all relevant information, such as measurements, postural assessments and range of movement. These measurements are necessary to ideally tailor your powerchair seating to your body. They will also conduct physical, sensory or cognitive tests to assess your current mobility, and to see that your specific functional and health and safety needs are met. Finally, they will assess your personal support related technology needs.
If required, your AT Practitioners can find relevant clinical and technical information about their role in the provisioning process, as well as many other helpful clinical resources in our online Therapists Hub.
How can I be sure my powerchair will be suited to my daily life? Can I trial your powerchairs in my home?
At this stage, your AT Practitioner or therapist and your local Magic Mobility agent will work in combination to develop a detailed specification and recommendation for your tailored seating solution. This may also involve you trialling a demonstration chair to further clarify your needs in your home or other everyday environments. Once this process is complete and costed, in most cases there is a funding approval stage which often requires your AT Practitioner to provide a detailed rationale for funding the recommended seating or powered mobility solution.
Click here for more information about powerchair funding in Australia and the US.
Helpful Resources
For Powerchair Users
User Needs Checklist
A checklist of questions to help you prepare for your assessment process by identifying and clarifying how powered mobility will enable you to meet your personal goals and everyday functional needs.
For Users & Therapists
Assess to Provide Freedom & Function
An helpful presentation created by Magic Mobility’s Rehab Engineer, overviewing the wider powerchair assessment, specification and provisioning process to maximise user independence and quality of life.
For Therapists & ATP's
Magic Mobility Therapist Hub
A site that provides a range of professional resources and clinical references useful for understanding the powered wheelchair assessment, specification and funding rationale process.
Still have questions about seating?
For more information about powerchair seating, to book a seating assessment, powerchair demonstration or trial, your first step is to find your local Magic Mobility accredited agent.
