Traveling around the country in our converted van gave me the opportunity experience some unique events that I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. But this event was out of the reach for us on our 4 wheels, so I was beyond excited to find out that they were going to fly me up so I could share my experiences and expertise making custom assistive technology solutions for the Empower 2 Make event at Nova Labs in Reston Virginia.
The framework for Empower 2 Make is a 72 hour weekend build a thon. For this event, four different teams were put together, each with their own design challenge. The challenges ranged from a shelf that moved to place the users items in a reachable position above his wheelchair tray to a custom golf cart seat that allowed a user to enjoy the game of golf though paralysed. In the end, all the teams did a wonderful job fulfilling their users needs with their prototypes and some have iterated on the designs even further since the event. It was my pleasure to be a part of the event, share my knowledge, and witness more makers bridging the gap of missing assistive technology solutions.
