Accidents which could cause a person to be wheelchair-bound

Also, what kind of features would have to be installed in a house for the wheelchair in order for the wheelchair-bound person to get around?

And, very importantly, how long does it take to learn how to get around in a wheelchair?

I can't answer all of your questions, but I know of a woman who is in a wheelchair because of a swimming accident. Dive into something a bit too shallow, and hit your head, and you can be in a wheelchair for a long time.

Basically, anything that causes some sort of trauma or impact to the spine...

Your house or apartment needs to have wide doorways, aisles, etc. And no thresholds that rise up.

Length of time learning to get around in a wheelchair will depend on the individual, their injuries, and the kind of wheelchair! It could vary from basic competence in a week or so to a year or more of hard rehab.

If you don't want a long time in hospital, avoid spinal and head injuries - your character will have major surgery and a long rehab to get the most movement and independence possible. A simpler idea is an amputation, due to injury, cancer or perhaps diabetes. Rehab will still be necessary to learn to use prostheses, but they can be hard to learn and painful to use - some people prefer a wheelchair. Other possibilties include badly broken legs or a broken pelvis (though this will require traction for some period of time), or a disease like arthritis, lupus or MS. These conditions are often progressive, with some periods of remission, so be alert to the lifetime implications if you choose one of these.

Anything that makes it unsafe for you to walk unassisted could lead to at least part-time wheelchair use. Some kind of leg weakness that makes you prone to fall might do it, if they thought it required more than crutches or a pair of canes. Have you noticed that hospitals often insist on taking just-discharged patients to the outer doors in a wheelchair? It's for liability reasons in case whatever they had been "in" for might be a contributing factor to a fall.

Adding to the comment about taking a long time to be ready for the wheelchair: I read a book about a woman named Joni Mitchell who had, I think, a swimming accident. There was a big decision when they all finally accepted she'd never walk again, in that they had to do something-or-other to her lower spine that made wheelchair life a bit better at the expense of making walking harder. So, fully adapting to a wheelchair can take a very long time. On the other hand her case was a couple of decades ago; things have probably changed.

Learning to use a wheelchair: If you have sufficient strength in both arms the old fashioned unmotorized kind take minutes to learn how to handle on the flat. Turning requires turning one wheel, or both in opposite directions; that can take a short while but not long. I don't know about handling ramps, since they were rare back when my Dad was in a wheelchair. I have no experience with the motorized kind. However, in addition to simple movement, there's learning how to do things while wheelchair-bound; you can't reach as high as you used to. You may have to change jobs (or fight for a job if your jurisdiction doesn't have laws about accomodation for disabilities). The local Chapters bookstore has an employee in a wheelchair; she sticks to helping customers in the sections without tall shelves (ie most of the store).

I went to high school with someone who was wheelchair bound due to a diving accident. He had been on the swimming/ diving team. Twenty years later, he attends our church, and he is still in a wheelchair.

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I think you mean Joni Eareckson Tada... Yes, she grew up in my hometown (I swam in the Chesapeake Bay plenty of times), and she was good friends with my dad and the pastor of the church. I could definitely learn a lot from that story.

Thank you for your other information, by the way. You said your dad WAS in a wheelchair. Did he get out of it? If so, how?

Well, I'm already using this, but...

Drop a gigantic balloon on them during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I think that would be enough to cripple someone.

If you want something temporary, then a couple of broken legs will do it. My uncle fell off a ladder and landed on his feet, but landed wrong on uneven ground and broke both legs below the knee. Although he felt OK enough and was out of the hospital in two days, he was six weeks in a wheelchair because he couldn't walk around on two casts. His family had to move a bed to the main floor of the house and build a ramp from the driveway to the front door. He did OK maneuvering the chair on his own but it wore him out pretty quickly because it used muscles he wasn't used to exerting, so someone else would start pushing him around starting in late afternoons.

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Any injury that breaks, fractures, compresses too much, shatters, or just generally severely messes up your spinal cord will paralyze everything below that point. depending on the severity of the break, you may still have some feeling, and mobility may be possible, so you can have her walk around again in a few years if you want to. if she is shot with a bullet, arrow, stabbed with a sword, etc. the doctors at the hospital will perform a lengthy and complicated 12+ hour surgery removing a chunk of metal or bullet from next to her spinal cord, but unfortunately, the damage is done, and she will never walk again, they say. this being fiction, whether she does walk again is entirely up to you, not some vicissitude of fate. after a week or 2, they oughta release her, since they'll just need the hole where the doctor pulled the junk out of to heal.

a sitting shower is most important, as is a metal bar positioned at waist level next to the toilet. food and dishes must be moved from the higher shelves to somewhere she can reach it, or, she could use one of those clamp things you see old people use sometimes. it'e about 3 feet long, has a trigger on it that contracts the jaws at the end that have a suction cup on them, it seems perfectly suited for this sort of thing. obviously, she can't use the stairs anymore, so for simplicity's sake, just make her live in a ranch style house (the kind with 1 floor only) instead of making her remove all the stairs.

I hope this was helpful

Duh! of course! I doubt the folk singer has ever been in a wheelchair. He died 21 years ago; I'm 53; he'd have been 102 by now. He was one of those who could walk but was very unsteady; he had a stroke-equivalent head injury, and lost much of the use of his left leg. He was 'in a wheelchair' in that partial sense for 23 years. I can tell you about getting a wheelchair into a car (not fun!) and getting a wheelchair down a set of steps (before ramps were common; somewhat scary if you're sensible, but I was a teenager).

If you want to use an injury that would lead to a long time in the hospital, one thing you could do is skip over the bulk of the time spent in the hospital. You could have the accident, and then skip to her leaving the hospital and mention how she'd been there for blah blah amount of time. You could also have a few scenes in the hospital, but not show everything. It's not like you're doomed to five chapters of her sitting in bed.