Inventions for disabled people that had wider use

[beweypm]

Can anyone name any inventions designed to help disabled people that had wider appeal for everyone and are in common use eg cruise control in cars

[Robb Phoenix]

Prosthetic limbs, Crutches, Wheel Chairs, Hearing Aids, glasses, walking sticks, ......................
What's the point?

[beweypm]

Robb - Perhaps I could have been clearer. I am looking at inventions that aimed to improve the livesof disabled people but as a consequence where also useful to everyone in society - another example is that of Alexander Graham Bell whose research on hearing and speech led him to experiment with hearing devices that eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. So your examples are not quite what I was looking for.

[VorVZakone]

Vibrators were initially invented for people with no penises.

[delboy3]

Plastic surgery?

[sp1214]

Chair lifts for the home

[Marijn]

I think text phones (using land lines) have been available to deaf people for many years. Now we are all able to text using mobile phones. Is that the sort of thing you're looking for?

[markysngc]

I get what you are asking but can't think of any, the only thing I will say is cruise control wasn't invented to assist disabled people and it was origianly not cruise control at all but just a hand throttle on trucks that could be locked into one possition to keep the engine revs up when driving other stuff from the engine, this then started to be used by the drivers to keep the tuck at a set(ish) speed when driving to save them having to hold the foot throttle down for hours on end, over a period of years this evolved into the cruise control we know today.

[wee willie]

who were the blow-up dolls invented for VorVZakone
lmao at @

[Tom Braider]

Robert Heinlein, the science fiction writer, claimed that he'd invented the water bed to stop long-term hospital patients or the paralysed getting bed-sores.

[rojash]

VorVZakone, I don't think you should class women as disabled

[fourtywatt]

voice recognition programs for those who can't type are used by many people now like Dragon Naturally Speaking.