Emory Erickson, the inventor of the transporter in a wheelchair, with his daughter, Danica Erickson
A wheelchair is a device used to permit locomotion in a humanoid who is unable to use his or her legs due to accident, disease, or natural causes. It may be wheeled or be supported by analogous anti-gravity generators.
The inventor of the transporter, Emory Erickson, used a wheelchair after being paralyzed in a transporter experiment accident.
After he was crippled in a training accident, Fleet Captain Christopher Pike was confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk or speak. The wheelchair provided movement as well as simple communication via a series of lights on the front of the device. Pike was given the illusion of leaving the wheelchair when his former colleague Spock brought him to Talos IV aboard the USS Enterprise in 2268. (TOS: "The Menagerie, Part I and Part II")
Admiral Mark Jameson had to use a wheelchair due to the debilitating effects of Iverson's Disease. He left the wheelchair after taking a rejuvenation treatment from planet Cerebus II which cured the disease and caused him to become appreciably younger. However, the treatment proved much too dangerous for humans. (TNG: "Too Short a Season")
Captain Jean-Luc Picard in his academy days used to have a teacher who had been confined to a wheelchair since birth. (TNG: "The Loss")
Melora Pazlar, also had to use a wheelchair to move around in areas of high gravity, due to her being an Elaysian, which prevented her from full range-of-movement while in high gravity areas. She sent the specifications of the wheelchair to Julian Bashir, before her arrival on Deep Space 9 in 2370. A low-technology version with wheels had to be used because Cardassian artificial gravity technology was not compatible with a standard Federation antigrav unit. (DS9: "Melora")
- The real reason was that the antigrav wheelchair that had already been built would not fit through the DS9 set corridors.