Lego unveils its first disabled figure
The Danish toymaker has unveiled its first ever disabled minifigure on Thursday. The figure of a hat-wearing boy in a wheelchair was first spotted at the Nuremberg international toy fair in Germany and featured on fan blogs.
Wheelchair accessible tuk-tuk debuts
The maker of a new tuk-tuk prototype retrofitted with a wheelchair ramp hopes to usher in a new era of wheelchair-friendly travel in Phnom Penh. Ian Jones, a consultant for the Agile Development Group, is the mastermind behind the new handicap-friendly tuk-tuk, which features a simple metal ramp that acts as backdoor to the tuk-tuk […]
Want Toys With More Diverse Abilities? There’s #ToyLikeMe For That
Last year, journalist and creativity consultant Rebecca Atkinson noticed a striking absence of disabled characters within her kids’ massive toy collection, so she did a little digging; she discovered that, outside of the occasional broken-leg-with-cast, disabled representation across the entire toy industry amounts to basically nil.
Wheelblades
Manual wheelchair drivers often experience reduced mobility in winter snow and slush; Wheelblades address this problem. Wheelblades are small skiis that attach to the front wheels of a manual wheelchair. Their wide contact surface distributes the wheelchair driver’s pressure evenly over the ground, preventing the small front wheels from sinking into the snow. Wheelblades are […]
Pneumatic tech could bring affordable full-page braille tablets to reality
Suppose you had a tablet that only displayed one line of text at a time. It would be pretty frustrating, but it’s a limitation that blind users of braille-displaying devices are faced with constantly. Thanks to new technology being developed at the University of Michigan, however, full-page refreshable braille tablets could soon be on their […]
New Food Scented Fragrance May Remind People with Dementia to Eat
The sense of smell is closely tied to memory, a fact that designers made use of when they developed Ode, a fragrance disperser designed to help people with dementia remember to eat. People with dementia often begin to eat less and suffer from weight loss, which can trigger other health problems. The high quality food […]
Tableware designed for Alzheimer’s patients
No one ever wants to see loved ones suffer in their later years. Not everyone takes the time to do something about it. For Sha Yao, watching her late grandmother’s decline at the unrelenting hands of Alzheimer’s disease prompted the industrial designer to take creative action in the form of assistive tableware.
Year in Review: The Coming Age of Automobility and What it Means for Designers
This year has seen steady movement towards a new age of automobility. Headlines celebrated the introduction of Tesla’s Autopilot system. We experienced the first widespread vehicle recall due to hacking vulnerabilities. The underlying ethics of algorithms being written for autonomous vehicles were discussed.
2015’s most intriguing innovations
Emerging technologies offer new opportunities to address challenges for all people, including people with blindness and other disabilities. In 2015, interesting technology trends included wearables, voice recognition, smart devices, drones, robotics and many more. In our opinion, the following are among the top assistive technology breakthroughs of 2015.
Students, People with Different Abilities Collaborate on Adaptive Design Solutions
Eyeglasses can be colorful, elegant and make a fashion statement. They become an extension of a person and reflect the wearer’s personality. Viewed over time, they blend in.