Technical Skills for Assistive Technology

Like general product design, designing products in assistive technology use cases can involve a wide variety of skills. A new wheelchair design might require knowing mechanical engineering. A more accessible website might need some CSS tinkering. A wearable medical monitoring device might require knowing how to sew, and so on.

In this course, we are focusing more on assistive technologies that have physical/mechanical solutions that can be made for an individual, rather than solutions that primarily involve software, or that involve modifications to infrastructure, for example. Because of this focus, and because of its usefulness in rapid prototyping, we are including a section here to introduce 3D printing and computer-aided design. Remember that these are just two of a multitude of skills and approaches that you might have to an AT problem, and you shouldn't hesitate to consider other approaches when trying to find a solution.