MIT Assistive Technology Design

Painting has long been thought of as a purely visual art form, for which the ability to see is a predetermined requisite. Yet, for John Bramblitt, a functionally blind artist who can only discern varying degrees of brightness, there is always another way.

John lost his sense of sight in 2001 due to complications from epilepsy. Despite the inability to “see” his work, he developed a method of tactile painting that replaces the sense of sight with the sense of touch. Each of John’s paints are coded in Braille. To mix paint, John can feel the texture of the two paints he is mixing until the mixture reaches the desired shade. To draw outlines of his paintings, John uses a fast drying paint that he can draw very precisely to create raised lines and thus determine the position of his brush on the canvas.

Using these techniques he’s even been able to create portraits of people’s he’s never seen, like his young son. Presently, he continues to produce and showcase his artworks. In his spare time, he teaches workshops on painting for individuals with disabilities. For John, being able to “draw without eyesight” reshaped his life. Yet for the rest of the world, it has transformed the possibilities of visual art, expanding to incorporate the other senses of the human body.

You can see more of John’s paintings on his website. You can also learn more about John’s story through the video below:

Banner for the MakerBot Assistive Tech Challenge on Thingiverse.

During the month of October, MakerBot (Maker of the popular desktop 3D printer) is hosting a  challenge to come up with better Assistive Technology. The task is to take an idea that was created at the Bay Area Make-a-thon from September 11 -13, and improve on them.  This competition is a must because it encourages people to think about making assistive technologies using 3D printing, something that will make assisitive technology as a whole cheaper and easier to make. As it becomes cheaper, it also becomes more accessible to the people that need it. As it becomes easier to make, it also becomes easier to adapt the technology to someone’s specific needs. 3D Printing is by far the easiest way to do this, and what better way to get people to do it than a friendly competition? Some of the new technologies included were:

Figure 1.

The device shown in Figure 1. is a grabber that can be used with your mouth. This is of course useful to anyone without good use of their arms, and gives them the ability to live a more independent life.

Figure 2.

The device shown in Figure 2. is called iEat and it’s an independent feeding device. Also useful for people with limited use of their arms, this gives them the ability to feed themselves; which is necessary for living an independent lifestyle.

Both devices were extremely low-cost compared to market counterparts, effective, and made in a matter of days. This shows that with Make-a-thons like this, really cool, cheap alternatives to expensive technology can rapidly emerge.

About five years ago, I volunteered at an organization called the Shimmy Club in Miami, FL. This is the organization’s mission statement:

Serving as a cultural catalyst, bringing music, arts, and dance from around the world to local communities, The Shimmy Club, Inc. promotes socially-oriented activities that not only unite families within a particular cultural heritage, but also strengthen our richly diverse communities across these traditions. In keeping with its strong philosophy of inclusiveness and diversity, we offer mixed ability programming, events, activities and arts education to people with disabilities.

Essentially, they teach people with disabilities how to dance Tango and provide them with many opportunities to perform for the community or dance in milongas.

Before I began volunteering, I didn’t know what to expect. There were kids that didn’t have control over their arms, and I wondered how dancing Tango was possible since the dance is all about the embrace. There were also people in wheelchairs, and I wondered how they could move across the space. If someone six years ago asked me if someone with cerebral palsy could dance, I would have probably said no, but after my experience with them and the years following, my answer would be a definite yes.

If there was anything I took from my experience with the Shimmy Club, it was that having a disability shouldn’t stop anyone from doing what they love. Dancing may take more time to master, when playing soccer one may  need a customized wheelchair, or to paint one may need a unique paintbrush in order to hold any brushes, but these solutions are possible and should be made possible for any one who has a desire to any of these activities. After all, we are all human, we’re all different in many ways (having a disability or not), but still human.

Someone with a disability should therefore still have the liberty to enjoy the arts, whether it is dancing Tango or not. Some of these activities can even be rehabilitating in ways that assistive technology and doctors cannot, and one can see the effects in this video. So perhaps insurance companies should cover ballet classes. Or soccer. Or other “leisure” activities. After all, how would anyone like it if they could no longer have control over their bodies and not be able to enjoy any of the arts even though it helps them get better?

If you would like to know more information about the Shimmy Club, you can click here. Though it looks like the website has not been updated in a while.

On Monday, when my team met with our client, Sara, I went shopping. I had some time between the end of class and the beginning of our meeting, so I walked to Central. By the time I was done shopping, I ended up filling a large bag with supplies. With my backpack on and my bag in hand, I walked to east Cambridge for our meeting.

A map of the five mile route I took that day.

It was a half hour walk there, and a half hour walk back to campus afterwards. I got dinner, walked back to my room at Next House, dropped off my bags, and walked back to main campus for three hours of rehearsal. When I got back, I still had enough energy to get some homework done. Overall it was over five miles of walking. It was a long day, to be sure, but it was doable. However, our client, Sara, would not have been able to do the same.

Sara has a condition which causes her bones to be much denser than the average person. It’s not a visible disability, but it affects her ability to get things done during the day. She finds herself becoming fatigued easily, especially when she has to carry heavy bags. I’m able to carry just about anything I could need throughout the day in my backpack. Sara doesn’t have that option. Going on a big grocery shopping trip and carrying my things back can be a bit tiring. For Sara, that’s just too much.

Sara is trying to get through her day without wearing herself out just by carrying the things she needs. Her difficulties aren’t coming from any technology, but my team and I hope to help her by using it.

I spent the summer working on the structural elements of a lower extremity exoskeleton at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute.  The goal of the project is to create a device which enables individuals with limited or no control of their legs to stand up from a sitting position and walk.  It would be an extremely capable device which ideally returns individual’s to average mobility.  The purpose of the project, however, is to push forward the capabilities of not just exoskeletons, but robotics and linear actuator design in general.  Because of this, the project will not yield useable results for years and, even then, the system will likely be exorbitantly expensive.

Mockup of exoskeleton joint locations

Model of final exoskeleton

Some exoskeleton parts

Since the start of PPAT, I’ve been thinking about the roles of different assistive technologies in relation to my summer work.  The necessity for low-cost, low-complexity solutions is apparent.  An example similar to an exoskeleton, a prosthetic, is the All-Terrain Knee being developed by the GEAR Lab at MIT.  This project aims to mimic the torques supplied by a human knee during a normal walking gait with only simple mechanical elements.  The simplicity of this knee means that it will be accessible to a much wider audience than a fully powered exoskeleton or prosthetic.  It takes the approach that approximating human motion cheaply is often better than trying to copy human motion exactly at great cost.  What is most important to the user at the moment is that the technology is available to them.

A diagram of the mechanical elements of the All-Terrain Knee developed by the MIT GEAR Lab. http://gear.mit.edu/Research_Projects/ATKnee.html

There is absolutely still value in pursuing difficult and far-off ideas like a fully actuated lower extremity exoskeleton because it will help move forward all exoskeleton and prosthetic technology, including the tools that are more accessible to everyday users.  However, there is also a need for addressing individuals’ needs in a more realistic and immediate fashion.  In many cases, an individual’s quality of life can be drastically improved with relatively simple technological solutions.

The debate over inclusive versus segregated classrooms for students with cognitive disabilities was brought to my attention when I volunteered at an outreach session at Edgerton last week. In alignment with an inclusive environment, the class incorporated two students with cognitive learning disabilities who mingled freely with the other students. However, I noted that the two students had difficulty advancing at the same rate as the rest of the class.

Arguments for a segregated classroom highlight the challenge of keeping pace with the class and the need for additional resources and attention for students with cognitive disabilities. Such students often require extra time and assistance to complete the same tasks. At Edgerton, I observed that the two students took longer to process the information presented and communicate their thoughts. One of the TA’s had to constantly check on them and keep them on track. When I was asked to guide them at one point, I discovered that I had to re-explain the classroom activity, pause and repeat myself as needed, and dictate the worksheet answers for them. The environment and pace was not well-suited for their learning.

While this anecdote presents an argument for segregated classrooms, it is also important to consider the negative effects of cutting off students with cognitive disabilities from the rest of society. Segregating a sector of students can be an alienating social experience for them. By being confined within a bubble, students with cognitive disabilities will not learn to interact with the rest of the world, perpetuating the vicious cycle of feeling alienated from society. Rather than learning to integrate themselves into society, they may grow up with the notion that they do not belong there.

The reasons for an inclusive classroom are compelling from a social standpoint, but implementing this system in practice is very resource-heavy. Nonetheless, I believe that this is a very important challenge to address, and that the situation can be improved through creative approaches to resource allocation.

One of the most significant leaps in understanding we can achieve, over the course of our lifetimes, is seeing the world as a continuous spectrum rather than as a set of discrete possibilities.

I’ve seen this pattern come up again and again, in my life and in my studies. Allow me to begin with a brief excursion into mathematics.

The ancient Greeks believed that the only lengths were rational numbers. It was not until a certain Hippasus of Metapontum discovered during the 5th century B.C. that the square root of 2 is irrational that the way was paved for the discovery of the real numbers. The real numbers are a continuous set of lengths that by and large describes today’s view of physical space. This new picture of the world, as a continuity, was absolutely revolutionary and crucial to our understanding of calculus and physics.

Hippasus, unfortunately, drowned for making this revelation. This notion was deemed so heretical that it could not be tolerated.

A second field in which this understanding comes up is in social identity, again and again. When I first realized that human sexual attraction lies on a spectrum–perhaps even an infinitude of spectrums–instead of two discrete boxes, I remember being mind-blown. When I first realized that gender is a continuous spectrum, it was yet another revelation. Race, height, intelligence, hair color–all these attributes we use to describe ourselves are simply attempts to chop up a continuous spectrum into discrete segments, a fact that is necessary because of human language but unfortunate because it so often leads to misunderstanding.

Like Hippasus, unfortunately, far too many people in the world today pay their lives for having this heretical understanding of the world.

And, as I’m sure you saw it coming–the continuation of this series of epiphanies for me has been the realization that disability is yet another one of those spectrums. If ability is the capacitance to achieve something, than every one of us is both abled and disabled, and the question is only one of degree.

How do I feel about this? I think the vlogbrothers sum it up pretty well in their YouTube video, “Human Sexuality is Complicated”: “…when the world becomes one of infinite continuums and those false dichotomies break down and those two shiny boxes break apart into seven billion shiny boxes–that’s actually pretty beautiful.”

We met with our client for the first time this week. When I was trying to picture how the meeting would go, I imagined a back-and-forth conversation where we would ask our client a question and he would respond. Instead, what really happened was our client walked right into the room and immediately started discussing his hopes for the project. It was like he was pitching an idea to venture capitalists. It was a good reminder that when designing products, it’s important to keep in mind what the consumer wants. It’s even more important when designing assistive technologies to cater the design to the customer. After all, the technology is meant to help the client perform certain tasks.

Our client has dyslexia and a below average auditory loop. Both these conditions affect his ability to do work, especially when it comes to checking email and listening to people talk about complex, abstract ideas. Just looking at our client, however, you wouldn’t realize that he was living with a disability. Obviously, there are both pros and cons to having an “invisible disability.” People don’t treat you any differently because they don’t realize there are some things that are more difficult for you to accomplish. In my personal opinion, I think it’s nice not to be defined by this one trait (your disability). However, at the same time, people might get frustrated with you easily if there are certain tasks that might be more difficult for you to accomplish than the average person. Thinking back to our wheelchair activity, I remember thinking that the first thing people noticed about me was the wheelchair. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be remembered as “the girl in the wheelchair”, but unfortunately I think that happens fairly often to people who use wheelchairs.

Source: Down Syndrome Ireland

Into the Infinite, and Beyond: 

Say you’re walking down the Infinite and you bump into a friend. You begin walking together. While catching up about what you’re up to this semester, they ask: “Oh! You’re taking PPAT? What’s that?” 

At MIT, where numbers and acronyms dominate, this seems like a fairly harmless question. But the reply we choose to give has implications far beyond Lobby 7.

There are, in essence, three replies we could give our friend:

1) The obvious: “Oh, Principles and Practices of Assistive Technology!”

2) The descriptive: “Oh! PPAT is a course where we design products to make disabled people’s lives easier.”

3) The normative: “Oh! PPAT is a course where we work alongside people with disabilities to build a solution that allows them to lead a more independent life.”

Which answer should we give our friend? If we’re late to a midterm and shout Option 1 while jetting into the distance, well, alright — that’s understandable. But what if we’ve got a few minutes to chat? What’s the difference between Option 2 and Option 3, and why should we make a conscious effort to choose one description over another?

After a month in the course, that distinction becomes clear: 

One of the first lessons we’re taught in PPAT is the importance of not only using “People First” language, but also to internalize and practice the philosophy behind it. People First language advocates “putting the person before the disability,” and reminds us that a disability is “simply a medical diagnosis.” Promoted by disability rights activist Kathie Snow, this small shift in our descriptive language has big implications: we actively recognize the potential, power, and agency of the nearly one billion people around the world who happen to have a disability.

This is one of the tools in our People First toolkit, I hope you find it useful!

So, now, if I have a few minutes to spare while chatting with a friend (and even if I don’t!), I vow to intentionally utilize People First language, and to recognize and honor the potential of humans of all abilities. I vow to humbly adhere to this principle throughout the design process, and work to carry its spirit with me beyond my time as a PPAT student.

After all, isn’t that what User-Centered Design (UCD) is all about? Putting the user first?

P.S. If you’re still curious, the answer is Option 3. Definitely Option 3.

Meet Adrianne, she’s a dancer who lives in Boston, Massachusetts

Her life and passion is dance and she works a ballroom dance instructor.

Unfortunately during the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 she got affected and lost one of her legs.

But she never gave up. Once she started her recovery from the marathon bombing she had one goal … “I’m going to dance again.”

After having initial rehab with a prosthetist in order to start walking again, she met Hugh Herr, a professor in HST as well as the head of the Biomechatronics lab in the Media Lab. Hugh is also a double amputee caused by a rock climbing accident on Mt. Washington when he was 16 years old.

In the process the engineers in the lab were tasked with building a controller for her prosthetic that would give her full mobility of a dancer. In order to design this controller, we used a motion capture system to record the motions of a dancer who worked with Adrianne.

( That’s me in the back working really hard :D)

After long hours of collecting the data and designing a controller for Adrianne we made a successful controller in order for her to dance like she used to.

She was awed by the success and many people were awed by her ambitious and relentless journey to pursue her dreams and return to dancing.