Stanford course seeks to tackle challenges faced by those with disability

Stanford University's annual Perspectives in Assistive Technology winter quarter class will be held for the 13th year in a row next January, becoming one of the popular classes that seeks collaboration between those with a disability and students enrolled in the course to explore the design, development, and use of technology that benefits people with disabilities.

David Jaffe

The 10-week engineering course led by David Jaffe explores the engineering, medical, technical, and psychosocial challenges of implementing technology solutions for people with disabilities and older adults through lectures by experts in the fields of assistive technology and rehabilitation. In addition, teams of students work with project partners, coaches, and individuals with disability or older adults (or family members or health care professionals) to fully understand the problem, identify assistive technology needs, brainstorm ideas, formulate design concepts, fabricate devices, test them with users, and report their efforts.

David is currently accepting project ideas from the disability community that could become part of the course and approved project suggestions become candidate student projects that are posted on the course website and disseminated to students as a handout on the first day of class.

To learn more about how to pitch your project for consideration, review the details on the course web site.