A Very Special Forum

Chauncy N. Rucker

I don’t want to take anything away from the great assistive technology (AT) conferences in America (CTG, CSUN, ATIA/TAM, and others), but in May of this year I had a perfect day attending a conference at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. This fifth annual forum was presented by the Lemelson Assitive Technology Development Center http://lemelson.hampshire.edu/ and funded by the Lemelson Foundation http://www.lemelson.org/ The title of the forum was “Developing Solutions - Developing Nations,” and the conference consisted of a day of speakers and discussions addressing worldwide efforts to bring accessibility and assistive technology to people in developing nations. The most impressive things about the forum for me were:

Quality of presentations

The morning opened with a panel chaired by John Williams, a leading writer in the disability field whose articles appear on the ConnSENSE Bulletin web site. The theme of the panel covered a broad range of topics, but much of it had to do with ways technology (hi and very low tech) was helping people around the world with a particular emphasis on developing countries. An additional part of the theme had to do with the extreme poverty of some nations compared to the enormous wealth in the U.S.

In addition to Mr. Williams, the panel included:

David Werner, Co-founder and Director of HealthWrights and a Visiting Professor at Boston University’s International School of Public Health, has been very much involved in the Projimo Children’s Wheelchair Program which has built and given away over 300 very innovative custom-made wheelchairs to individuals in rural Mexico. http://www.healthwrights.org/sillas You might be interested in a new fund raising effort for the Projimo program. It's an intensive Conversational Spanish Training program, conducted in Mexico by individuals with disabilities at $140 a week including board and room PROJIMO_AC@hotmail.com

Ralf Hotchkiss is a leading inventor and designer of low-cost, high-science wheelchairs. As founder of Whirlwind Wheelchair International http://whirlwind.sfsu.edu he and his team have built 15,000 wheelchairs for people around the globe and have established a network of wheelchair builders in 25 developing countries. These people are are now building sturdy, inexpensive and adaptable wheel-chairs from locally available materials.

Since 2001Tomas Lagerwall has been the Secretary General of Rehabilitation International, a federation of national and international organizations and agencies. Rehabilitation International develops and promotes initiatives to protect the rights of people with disabilities, improve rehabilitation and other crucial services for people with disabilities , and increase international collaboration towards these objectives.

Deborah Lisi-Baker, Executive Director of the Vermont Center for Independent Living represents citizens with disabilities and the independent living movement in state and national disability policy initiatives and helps establish partnerships that expand the civil rights available to citizens with disabilities. Deborah was a very powerful addition to the panel and I was terribly impressed with her chutzpa!

The panel presentation was full of interesting insights. It turns out that hi-tech can’t necessarily solve problems in the developing world. A woman in the audience was so moved that she offered to give a power wheel-chair to the effort if there could be a way to get it to a country like Africa. It was a wonderful gesture, but it was pointed out that not only would it be expensive to transport the chair to Africa, but it would be impractical. It turns out that the price of spare parts for a U.S. chair would be beyond the means of individuals in many developing countries.

We learned that 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day and 2 billion live on less than $2 a day. One can imagine that the cost of replacing a wheel-chair battery would be impossible to manage. Other surprising figures had to do with the generosity of countries like Norway, Denmark, and Sweden compared to the U.S. As a percent of Gross National Income, the U.S. is far below these countries.

The panel was excellent and the time really flew by. In the afternoon some of the members of panel and others led workshops. The others consisted of people like Fred Dalton and Gene Williams. Mr. Dalton has been with the United Nations for eleven years and for over a year now he has worked with the UN Division for Social Policy and Development that houses the Focal Point on Disability within the UN system. He worked with the historic first-ever Ad Hoc Committee meeting to consider proposals for a comprehensive international convention to promote and protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. The convention occured this year in Manila has has produced several milestone documents.

Gene Williams began work on disability rights in 1975 with a PBS mini-series and in the independent living movement. He has been a United Nations consultant in Angola, UNICEF in Brazil, taught in China and Indonesia and worked in the Khmer refugee camps in Thailand. He has also been involved with PROJIMO in Mexico.

Here is a sampling of the workshop topics:

Student Inventor Showcase

After the panel presentation there was time to inspect projects developed by Hampshire College students.

Let me just list a few of the projects and then I’ll describe two of them.

A Hi Tech Example

Dynamic Seating System

Current systems to hold epileptic patients in their chairs during a seizure are at times ineffective and in some cases dangerous. Depending on the system, these sometimes destroy the equipment or even harm the user by over or under-restraining the person. Over the last two years Julian Groeli, the LATDC staff, and a local engineer have developed a seating insert that uses pneumatics to detect and respond to the user's body language. Once a seizure is detected the seat acts like a shock absorber, providing support while still allowing movement. During the past year the team has developed an advanced prototype, featuring a more accurate pressure sensor and a more stable reclining mechanism. Taking the pneumatics a step further, they also have added a small set of air bladders that can help decrease skin breakdown through slow pressure cycling. The system has recently been installed onto a Quickie Action Arrow series power wheelchair.

The team intends to patent and license several critical components of the seating system. A. number of spinoff projects are presently under development as a result of this project

A lower tech example

I had decided to tell you about the SportPort which Kristin Komorowski described in a video as being quite a lo tech device. The SportPort is simply a trailer she designed so her friend could pull a Monoski behind his wheelchair. However it turns out that the trailer wasn’t all that simple. An adjustable attachment accommodates various wheelchair designs. The cart has a telescoping arm with which it can move the Monoski, and which works at varying lengths to allow ease of movement, even in small spaces. A seat catcher uses a ratcheting crank system to lift the ski off the ground by the seat while simultaneously locking it into place. It was a marvelous invention, but I did want to find something to illustrate the range of technology in the students’ projects.

The Lap Comforter

Student Chemuttaai Koech worked in conjunction with the Easthampton Community Resources for People with Autism to create a weighted pressure-stimulating device that can be used for anxiety reduction, to increase attention to a motor task and to reduce self-stimulatory behavior in autistic children. The Lap Comforter consists of seven weighted nylon cylinders that slide into an outer shell. The outer shell is breathable, washable, comfortable cotton with an appealing child-friendly pattern. The cylinders are made of cordura nylon, chosen for its strong, waterproof but highly breathable properties. After calculating optimum lap pressure, each cylinder was filled with one pound of steel shot, for a total of seven pounds across the lap. Used as a passive weight, the zinc-coated shot is easy to adjust, non-reactive to water, impervious to mechanical difficulties, and provides a stimulating texture. Chemu's Lap Comforter's unique tube design conforms to the shape of the child's lap, providing uniformly distributed pressure. It is adjustable to fit children of various sizes, and is currently being field tested by children with disabilities in a local elementary school.

 

The Lemelson Assistive Technology Development Center

Any Hampshire student can come to the Lemelson Assistive Technology Development Center to participate in an experiential education in applied design, invention, and entrepreneurship through the use of assistive technology and universal design. The LATDC tends to be open “student hours.” That is from about noon to midnight. Students research a problem for individuals with disabilities and then come up with a solution that may be very low or very high tech. Once they develop a proposal for a solution to the problem they may apply to the Lemelson Foundation for money necessary for developing a prototype. This year the LATDC program will offer up to $71,000 in student grants to develop innovative new designs.

The LATDC has space and resources for creating all manner of assistive technology devices. It is equipped with a design lab for manual and computer-aided drafting and softgoods creation, and a fabrication shop equipped for prototyping of student projects in metals and plastics. Many of the students will learn skills such as welding from shop instructors. The students will at some point consider entrepreneurial aspects. Several products have received patents and are now commercially available.

The Cost of the forum

Assistive technology conferences seem to be getting more and more expensive. Such was not the case at the Lemelson Forum. I paid $5.00 to hold my place, but what I received was worth so much more. We received free parking, a continental breakfast and lunch plus the great presentations and the students' showcase. The Lemelson Foundation funded the conference including the speakers, meals, and other expenses. I’m only sorry I hadn’t heard of the first four forums put on by the Lemelson Assistive Technology Development Center.

Next year the theme will be Assistive Technology and the Arts and they are already lining up significant presenters. I won't miss it and I know the Lemelson Center would love to have as many people as possible come to

The Sixth Annual Forum
Friday, May 7, 2004

I want to thank Lauren J. Way, Associate Director of the LATDC, for her help in my finding out about the forum, and help with gathering additional information, much of which you see above. If I were you I'd send Lauren a note so you will be added to the mailing list for next year's forum. lway@hampshire.edu 413-559-5806

© 2003 ConnSENSE Bulletin