RESUMO
Introduction: The World Health Organization estimates that in 2010, 15% of the world's population lived with some form of disability and 10% of these people required wheelchairs. Colombia and other Spanish-speaking countries lack reliable scales, and ones that are in Spanish, to assess wheelchair handling skills such as that provided by the Wheelchair Skills Test 4.3.Objective: To translate and cross-culturally adapt the Wheelchair Skills Test 4.3 form to Spanish, to be used with the Colombian population that uses a wheelchair.Materials and method: The design of this research uses a methodology that centres on validation studies and transcultural adaptation following the stages of translation, back translation and evaluation of translations by the author and expert judgement.Results: The adaptation had a global agreement index of 93.3 (Total Agreement Level). The three indicators were 92% relevance, 93.3% coherence and 94.5% sufficiency; and 22 of the 51 items evaluated (43.1%) had a 100% agreement level.Conclusions: The outcome of this transcultural adaptation was the Colombian Spanish version of the Wheelchair Skills Test (WST) 4.3 Form.Implications for rehabilitationFifteen per cent of the world's population (2010), and 10% of people with disabilities need wheelchairs.The Colombian population requiring the use of a manual wheelchair, 51% are limited in terms of "walking, running, jumping" and permanently limited in their movement for walk (29.32%).The use of reliable and cross-culturally adapted scales, such as the Wheelchair Wheelchair Skills Test (WST), is essential for rehabilitation personnel.The assessment of wheelchair user skills is fundamental to identify the level of participation in their respective communities as well as the development of their basic activities.