Engineering to enhance human mobility, play, and exploration
The Steele Lab’s own Mia Hoffman was featured in an article, Wheels in motion: Improving mobility technologies for children, via the Department of Mechanical Engineering. This article highlighted her work on adapted ride-on cars in collaboration with Steele Lab Alumni Heather Feldner. Way to go, Mia!
“Gears of Progress” Episode Two featured Mia Hoffman on early childhood mobility, young kids as participants, and accessibility of research for people with disabilities.
Name: Gears of Progress
Platforms: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Castbox
Release frequency: bi-weekly on Fridays
Theme: Podcast about research and innovations in rehabilitation engineering and assistive technologies aimed to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. Every episode will feature engineers, medical professionals, end-users, and organizations who focus on improving the health and well-being of individuals with disabilities. We will be covering topics such as emerging tech, outcome measures, medical practice, public policy, accessibility education, and so much more!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GearsOfProgress
Journal Article in Disability & Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology:
The accessibility of the built environment is an important factor to consider when providing a mobility device to a young child and their family to use in the community.
Aim: To quantify the driving patterns of children using an adapted ride-on car in their home and community environment over the course of a year using an integrated datalogger.
Method: Fourteen children (2.5 ± 1.45 years old, 8 male: 6 female) used adapted ride-on cars outside and inside of their homes over the course of a year. We tracked their device use metrics with a custom datalogger and geospatial data. To measure environmental accessibility, we used the AccessScore from Project Sidewalk, an open-source accessibility mapping initiative, and the Walk Score, a measure of neighborhood pedestrian-friendliness.
Results: More play sessions took place indoors, within the participants’ homes. However, when the adapted ride-on cars were used outside the home, children engaged in longer play sessions, actively drove for a larger portion of the session, and covered greater distances. Most children tended to drive their ROCs in close proximity to their homes. Most notably, we found that children drove more in pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and when in proximity to accessible paths.
Interpretation: The accessibility of the built environment is paramount when providing any form of mobility device to a child. Providing an accessible place for a child to move, play, and explore is critical in helping a child and family adopt the mobility device into their daily life.
Congratulations to Mia Hoffman for passing her General Exam!
Mia’s proposed work titled Quantifying On-Time Access to Mobility was approved by her Ph.D. committee.
Awesome job, Mia!
Lab members, Mia Hoffman, Kat Steele, Heather Feldner and Katie Landwehr led a “Switch Kit” Workshop at Kindering in Bothell, WA.
The workshop aimed to teach Speech-Language Pathologists how to use a new system we have designed with the MakeyMakey for inclusive play options in early intervention. The team also got to try their hands at making their own adaptive switches out of pool noodles! Stay tuned for more on this project.
