How does the Bracehorn compare to workarounds like grabbers, plastic bags, and long-handled shoehorns?
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Short answer: Dominic addresses each common workaround in turn and explains why it fails. Standard shoehorns are too skinny and too long to control a brace. Grabber tools cannot be used to put a shoe on at all because they are too weak for the task. Plastic bags placed over the foot cause their own problems, since the shoe can still bend, the bag may need to be torn and pulled out afterward, and critically the bag does nothing to stop the heel counter from folding over. Long-handled shoehorns share the same fundamental flaw as regular ones, being too narrow, which means they shift around during use and force the user to try angling the device many different ways before it works. None of the workarounds provide the guidance function the brace actually requires.
In Dominic's words
Basically, a lot of shoehorns are just too skinny and they are just too long. Grabbers cannot do it, you cannot put the shoes on with a grabber, they are just too weak. And you cannot really put a plastic bag over it, because that can also make the shoe bend, and that does not help you. It might slide in, and then you would have to rip the plastic and pull it out.
But it also does not guide the heel counter from bending. And then also long handle shoehorns are just way too skinny, so they move around too much, and you kind of have to angle it in so many different ways. It is just very difficult.
That is really the common thread with all of them. None of those things were designed for a brace. They were designed for a bare foot, or for reaching something, and people are just making do with what they have because nothing purpose built existed.