Understanding Fatigue and Stamina Management Opportunities and Challenges in Wheelchair Basketball
Patrick Carrington, Denzel Ketter, Amy Hurst · 2017 · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17) · doi:10.1145/3132525.3132543
Summary
This paper investigates the current use and future potential of wearable fitness technologies for stamina and fatigue management in wheelchair basketball — a team sport originally created for paraplegic athletes that now includes people with a range of physical abilities. The research was motivated by the observation that most commercial fitness devices are designed for able-bodied users (e.g., step counting is meaningless for wheelchair users) and the adaptive sports community remains underserved. The study combined three methods: observations at the National Wheelchair Basketball Tournament (NWBT) over two years (2016 and 2017), semi-structured interviews with five wheelchair basketball players and two coaches, and an online survey with 76 respondents (59 players, 7 coaches, 10 who were both). The NWBT observations revealed the sport's structure including three adult competition divisions, a functional classification system that assigns players classes from 1.0 to 4.5 based on trunk mobility and physical function (teams are limited to 15 total classification points among five active players), and fatigue-related medical incidents during games. The interviews explored participants' existing experiences with fitness trackers (mixed — devices often miscounted activity), current manual tracking practices, desired metrics (distance, speed, acceleration, heart rate, push count), and ideal device form factors. The survey validated and extended interview findings at scale.
Key findings
Over 85% of players and more than 97% of coaches expressed at least "somewhat interested" in automatic tracking of stamina and fatigue metrics. The most desired metrics among players were movement/speed (72.5% extremely or very interested), respiration (66.6%), heart rate (62.3%), number of pushes (52.2%), and distance travelled (53.6%). Coaches were particularly interested in movement/speed (82.4%) and number of pushes (82.4%), and uniquely interested in tracking player positions on the court. A key finding was the different information needs between players and coaches: players wanted self-management data to improve personal performance and body awareness, while coaches wanted team-level data for strategy, substitution decisions, and training programme design. For device form factors, players preferred flexibility — "either body or chair" received the most votes (34 of 91), followed by "both body and chair" (26). Participants suggested mounting sensors under the wheelchair seat (protected from collisions) and wearing devices in existing approved form factors like headbands, chest straps, or wristbands. The study also identified injury prevention as a critical application, particularly for shoulder injuries which are prevalent among wheelchair basketball players. Participants emphasised that tracking during competitive games rather than just practice would be most valuable, as effort levels differ significantly.
Relevance
This research highlights a significant gap in the wearable fitness technology market: at the time of the study, only the Apple Watch with watchOS 2.0 offered any wheelchair-specific features (push tracking instead of steps). For accessibility practitioners and technology designers, the paper provides a detailed requirements analysis for an underserved community where physical activity is central to identity and wellbeing. The functional classification system in wheelchair basketball — where players of vastly different physical abilities compete together with team-balancing rules — creates unique tracking challenges, as the same metric (e.g., push count) means different things for different classification levels. The study also demonstrates the value of adaptive sports communities as research sites for understanding broader fitness technology needs of wheelchair users. Limitations include the self-selected survey sample, ordinal survey data, and lack of between-group comparisons by classification level or competition division.
Tags: adaptive sports · wearable technology · wheelchair · fitness tracking · physical disability · quantified self · inclusive design