Introduction

People with Disabilities and Other Challenges as Co-Designers

In this challenge, we hope to get you thinking about assistive technology and disability in ways that will be useful as an engineer and designer. Just as there is no universal experience of disability, there is no universal list of solutions for problems in people's daily lives. As an engineer/designer, you need to be prepared to work on solutions for clients in situations you may not be used to. As such, your job will not be to step in and tell people how to solve their problems.

You should keep in mind that while the background of this online course and more generally of assistive technology is focused on people with disabilities, we can also take a broader view of "assistive technology" to include things outside of what would traditionally be considered disabilities. For example, for our summer synchronous course, we designed for people who experience difficulty with some aspect of an activity of daily living, regardless of whether or not they have (or think of themselves as having) a "traditional" disability. These individuals can also be your co-designers, expanding the range of experience even more.

"Clients" / "Co-Designers"

In this course you will learn how to work with an individual with a disability as a co-designer who is part of your team. Though "clients" (individuals who commission a designer to create a particular piece of work, for example) for will typically take an active role in the design process, it is especially important to work with people with disabilities to solve accessibility-related issues. Designing with people with disabilities instead of for people with disabilities helps a) ensure the resulting products actually solve the identified challenge, and b) don't cause more problems than they solve.

Further, we use the term co-designer to emphasize the role of people with disabilities as active partners in the design process: co-designers set design specifications and make sure the resulting product actually makes sense as a tool that someone can use to overcome a barrier in daily life. So, your co-designer might fill the role of team leader, project manager, designer, etc. within your team.

Note that terms like client, user, customer, etc. may be entirely appropriate based on the setting - co-designer is just the term we think works best here.

Product Specifications

In this course we will also talk about "product specifications" as the set of requirements or needs that an engineering design product must meet. In the context of assistive technology, this explicitly includes the accessibility needs of co-designers. Although accessibility should always be a concern in design/engineering projects, our product specifications in this course will relate to specific accessibility barriers. Thus, the product must help someone overcome those barriers and not cause any new ones in order to be considered a success.

Reflect

As you move forward in this course, we hope you will remember that assistive technology and disability are dynamic concepts: they take on different shades of meaning depending on a specific person's context. The challenges and the rewards of this course will come from figuring out how to apply several different kinds of knowledge/experience into a specific problem-solving context.

AT in Action

Real-World Users

Assistive technology comes in many forms to fit a lot of different contexts. To get a clearer idea of what some kinds of assistive technology look like, please watch the two videos below:

• Video profile of Elle, who communicates with others through assistive technology. In this case, Elle uses a tablet device with software to assist her in communicating her thoughts.

• AT Hackathon video profile of Team Lilly, who uses a walker. Although a walker may not seem as complicated as an electronic device, the video shows how much room for improvement and good engineering there was to help create a walker that would suit Lilly's needs.

Though AT comes in many forms, we will focus on mechanical devices in this class. So, we will focus on designing physical objects/tools, like Lilly's walker, rather than an electronic device or software like the ones that Elle uses.

Research

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) hosts a podcast called Milestones, in which they feature research into child health and human development. In this episode, Dr. Alison Cernich (director of NICHD’s National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research) talks about different kinds of research into assistive technology. We would like you to listen to this episode of NICHD Podcast: Boosting Mobility for People with Disabilities. (The website includes a transcript of the podcast as well.) We would also like you to take a look at "NICHD Resource: What are some types of assistive devices and how are they used?" for a few more examples of assistive technology.

This Course's Approach to AT

Co-Designers

This course focuses on assistive technology as an engineering design product. That means we'll develop a technological solution to a very specific problem defined by a co-designer. It is important to remember that our co-designers have specific expertise on the nature of their design problem and on which solutions will actually work to suit their own needs and abilities. It is also important to remember that co-designers, like every other member of your design team, will not have all the answers. It is up to you to work together as a team to develop solutions.

The Scope of a Solution

As the readings from this section highlight, it is important to remember that disability involves a complex interaction between a person and the society they live in. For example, voice recognition software that helps someone use a computer hands-free might look a lot like personal assistant software that is widely used on smart phones. As another example, most people with prescription glasses probably wouldn't consider that an example of assistive technology, even if they couldn't drive, bike, or participate fully in a classroom setting without them. These observations are related to the role that society plays in determining what is a disability and what is assistive technology.

You might also notice that assistive technology solves problems that might be prevented from happening again through changes in industry, law, or social norms. While these social solutions to broad accessibility problems are necessary, this program will focus on more immediate solutions to personalized problems. 

For example, a co-designer with one arm might be interested in a way to more easily manipulate the zippers on their coats. A solution outside the scope of this program might be to work with clothing designers on making adaptable clothing options the norm in the fashion industry so that people with physical disabilities can shop in any store to find functional clothing they like. Alternatively, a solution appropriate for this program might be to engineer a tool that your co-designer can use with one hand to zip the zippers on any article of clothing. It's important to note that both of these approaches would be important parts of addressing accessibility issues in fashion long-term: an engineer might be able to show that creating an accessible zipper is possible, and someone trying to change the fashion industry might help spread that engineering solution more widely.

Looking Ahead

In this program, we hope to help you develop engineering, design, problem solving, and listening skills you can use to address issues that people with disabilities face today. By the end of the program, we hope you feel more comfortable working on issues related to disability and analyzing whether the products you design are accessible to people with disabilities. These skills will help you work on assistive technology projects in the future, as well as strengthen your design skills to be a better engineer overall.