Several decades ago, Alexander Yudin lost his leg in a car accident. Three years ago, he slipped using crutches on ice, leaving him with a complicated hip fracture which at 67-years-old meant he wouldn’t be able to walk for the rest of his life. Leaving his apartment on the third floor of a block in Timashevsk, a small town in southern Russia, became impossible for Yudin, as his house does not have any facilities for low-mobility residents to move around. To exit the house, he needed at least one more person to help him, and his son had to spend the day at work. “I was lying with a cast and wondering how to avoid immobilizing myself, how to get out of this situation,” Yudin told Reuters. After many hours spent browsing the internet for solutions and not finding any, Yudin came up with his own—constructing a solar-powered balcony elevator. The construction took several months as he ordered …