Nicole Zaino, Alyssa Spomer, and Megan Auger volunteered at the swimming event at the Special Olympics Washington’s State Spring Games. Congratulations to all of the athletes!
Outreach
Members volunteer in the Special Olympics
Alyssa Spomer, Karley Benoff, and Michael Rosenberg volunteered at the cheer line, bocce, and tennis sporting events as well as the awards ceremony for powerlifting at the Special Olympics. The University of Washington was proud to host this fantastic sporting event, the athletes from all over the country, and fans, family, and coaches. Congratulations to all of our athletes!
Students lead toy hack at Expanding Your Horizons Conference
Expanding Your Horizons (EYH website) is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing gateway opportunities for female middle and high school students to become more involved in STEM activities and careers. Two of our Steele Lab teams participated. Michael Rosenberg and Momona Yamagami created a remote control car you can control using muscle activity, and engaged in hands-on learning with the young women. Members of the University of Washington’s HuskyADAPT (Accessible Design & Play Technology) team, including lab members Brianna Goodwin, Brandon Nguyen, and Karley Benoff, led a workshop yesterday on accessible design and adaptation of toys for children with varying abilities.
A total of 12 toys were adapted to incorporate a new switch mechanism to facilitate play, and 26 high school women learned about toy adaptation, soldering, and circuitry. Thank you to our HuskyADAPT team and our lab members for their dedication to outreach events!
Heather Feldner receives Harlan Hahn Award
Harlan Hahn was a well known disability rights activist and scholar, after he passed away the University of Washington received an endowment fund to support the integration of disability studies into research and education.
Heather Feldner was awarded $4000 to pursue the following project, as summarized below:
The Harlan Hahn Endowment Fund will support the creation and delivery of a multidisciplinary technology design course curriculum that infuses disability studies content and encourages student activism within the science and engineering communities of UW and the disability communities of Seattle. Students will gain exposure to seminal disability studies scholarship about the social and complex embodiment models of disability, the history of disability discrimination and the Disability Rights Movement, and explore how disability studies can inform issues of accessibility and inclusive design that have been historically conceptualized within a medical model of disability. Each student will participate in a technology co-design project with a disabled community member serving as a consultant and project lead. Funding will also support the assessment of student attitudes and knowledge of disability studies principles prior to and after completing the course, as well as support dissemination of the course model and outcomes at a national engineering conference in 2018.
An introduction to HuskyADAPT (Accessible Design and Play Technology)
About HuskyADAPT: HuskyADAPT (Accessible Design and Play Technology) is a new collaboration between the UW Departments of Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and the Division of Physical Therapy.
The Problem: Play is important for all age groups – for socialization, development, learning, and community engagement. In the Pacific Northwest, there are over 1.5 million people with disabilities- people who face a lack of access to environments and experiences that are inclusively designed to enable meaningful engagement in life and play.
Our Goal: We aim to create the first adaptive toy lending library in our state and in the region, including on-line infrastructure for sharing open-source designs, integrating outreach events to encourage underrepresented groups in STEM, and expanding access to inclusive play technology. Because Play is for Everyone!
To learn more, visit our website, facebook page, or follow this link for HuskyADAPT visuals (PDF).