Wheelchair Skills Test
The Wheelchair Skills Test (WST) is a standardized, objective assessment of how well a wheelchair user can perform a graded set of individual wheelchair skills, from basic maneuvers like rolling forward and turning to advanced ones like descending curbs and performing a stationary wheelie. Developed by R. Lee Kirby and colleagues at Dalhousie University and validated through a 2002 pilot and a 2004 measurement-properties study of version 2.4, the WST scores each skill for whether the user can perform it and how safely, then summarizes performance as a percentage of skills passed. It turns the diffuse notion of wheelchair mobility into a reliable, comparable, and trainable outcome.
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Sources
- Kirby, R. L., Dupuis, D. J., MacPhee, A. H., Coolen, A. L., Smith, C., Best, K. L., Newton, A. M., Mountain, A. D., MacLeod, D. A., & Bonaparte, J. P. (2004). The Wheelchair Skills Test (version 2.4): measurement properties. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 85(5), 794-804. DOI: 10.1016/j.apmr.2003.07.007 ↗
- Kirby, R. L., Swuste, J., Dupuis, D. J., MacLeod, D. A., & Monroe, R. (2002). The Wheelchair Skills Test: a pilot study of a new outcome measure. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 83(1), 10-18. DOI: 10.1053/apmr.2002.26823 ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 23). Wheelchair Skills Test (WST). ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/disability-studies/wheelchair-skills-test
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- Wheelchair Skills Training ProgramDisability Studies↔ compare