At 23, studying physics and chemistry in Strasbourg, France, Jean-Pierre Kempf decided he wanted to drive a car just using his hands. It was 1954 and the only transportation he had had since he lost the use of his legs due to polio at the age of two, was a tricycle.
He always had to leave it outside, in front of the school and now of the university. 

He was then carried by his classmates from classroom to classroom. 

He had passed the entrance exam for the National School of Chemistry but was denied access because of his disability. He was however still determined to become a research scientist.

Mechanics was his passion, so in his spare time he assembled a car out of various parts and adapted it to be able to drive it himself.
He installed a ring on top of the
steering wheel to accelerate, a lever left as a hand clutch and a lever right as a hand brake. “I realized that once I was behind the wheel, I was like anybody else!” he said, so he decided to share his experience:

He sent a letter to a car magazine explaining how he was driving. The publication of this letter
brought him such a large demand from paraplegics and amputees who wanted to drive, that he started his own company to adapt cars for them. He filed his patent for the accelerator ring in 1955.

At the very beginning most of his customers were in Paris, because the only rehabilitation center in France was in Paris, so he would make all the parts in his shop in Strasbourg and every week he would drive 8 hours (300 miles) to Paris where one of his customers had given him access to a workshop.
He would park his car next to the customer’s car and because he still didn’t own a wheelchair, he would crawl to the customer’s car with his parts and his toolbox.

He would do the installation and if it took more than a day he would sleep in his sleeping bag and eat food he had brought with him because he couldn’t go to a hotel or a restaurant. 

When his work was completed and his customer was happy, he would drive 8 hours back to Strasbourg.

For him the “thank you” from his customer was more important than the money he received.

It took him over a year before he could buy a wheelchair. It was an Everest & Jennings folding wheelchair which totally changed his life.
He was finally really independent.

His company became the leading driving aids manufacturer in France with installation sites and agents in most large cities in France and in several European countries. The
accelerator ring and main hand brake became the standard hand controls in France and they still are today.

Martine KEMPF is the CEO of KEMPF Inc. in the US and of KEMPF SAS in Europe.

In 1985 as an astronomy student she invented the Katalavox, a speech recognition control system used to control secondary functions in cars for drivers without the use of their arms.

She taught herself electronics in her spare time with books and magazines and designed a very fast and reliable speech recognition system way ahead of its time.

Her invention was used in cars for disabled drivers, in power wheelchairs for quadriplegics and in surgical microspcopes used by surgeons in operating rooms.

In 1985 she wanted to start her own company in France but the socialist government had nationalized the banks and the government promised her a loan that never materialized, so she left France and came to Silicon Valley to start her business.

In five minutes with five Dollars she started her company in Sunnyvale, CA. Her company thrived adapting surgical microscopes for many hospitals like Mayo Clinic, UCLA, Stanford, Manhattan Eye and Ear and many others.

She also adapted the surgical microscopes of world famous Prof. Svatislav Fyodorov in Moscow, Russia in 1985.
Her company KEMPF was named "Small Business of the Year" by the City of Sunnyvale and the County of Santa Clara in 1990.
She received many awards for her work and many articles and book chapters were published about her.

Article in People Magazine in 1986:
https://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20093718,00.html

In 1987 her hometown in France, Dossenheim-Kochersberg, named a street after her: "Rue Martine Kempf".
Present at the dedication was the President of the European Parliament, Pierre Pflimlin. She was just 28. 
Her immigration to the US was facilitated by President Reagan whom she had given a voice activated toy train for his 73rd birthday in 1984.