Students and professors at the University of North Florida are making it a little bit easier for kids with disabilities to play.

The Adaptive Toy Project is a program aimed at creating accessible toys for the high number of ability-impaired children in north Florida. Juan Aceros, a professor of electrical engineering at UNF, and Mary Lundy, an assistant professor of the doctorate physical therapy program at UNF, started the program last year.

Along with the project, Aceros said, the university offers a neurotechnology elective entitled “Assistive Technology and Accessibility,” in which about 40 students engineer and design the toy modifications.

“We noticed that there is a very big need in North Florida for adaptive toys,” Aceros said. “And we decided that the best way to reach a large number of these kids would be through a class.”

The popular course, which is funded through grants, is a mixture of electrical engineering undergraduates, mechanical engineering undergraduates and both graduate and doctorate physical therapy students, Lundy said.

Together, these majors form cross-disciplinary teams and pool their knowledge to create the perfectly accessible toy for an individual child, she added.

Before any work is done, though, a physical therapist must meet with the child in need of the toy and determine the necessary modifications, said Ricardo Gerena, a senior electrical engineering major. Then, a student team gets to work on making those adaptations a reality.

For kids with ability impairments who can’t toggle switches, teams may remove the switch or move it to a new spot with increased accessibility, Lundy said. When adapting ride-on toys, the engineering and PT students deal more with replacing steering wheels with joysticks, or removing pedals.

“We may be able to move a switch to a specific location, we may remove a double switch, things like that,” Aceros said. “What we have done this semester is add a joystick, which allows the kid to control steering in a much better way. We’ve also adapted a microcontroller, which can ramp the speed and make the movement more smooth.”

Gerena, who has wanted to be a part of the project since its inception, cites his two little brothers — one with spina bifida and one with cerebral palsy — as his inspirations for getting involved.

“I felt a personal connection with it, which is why I decided to take the class,” he said. “And when we got to see the girl we were building the car for, it was like another level of understanding for what we were doing.”

Adapted toys are given to their new owners at the “gift event,” Gerena said.

Lundy agrees with him that it is an emotional experience.

“What’s not to love about getting toys, right?” Lundy said. “When children realize that they have control over something in their environment, it’s a big deal. They don’t have that independent movement like typical kids do.”

When the child is done with or outgrows the toy, Lundy said the only thing the Adaptive Toy Project asks is that they return the toy so the university can place it in a lending library. From there, the toy is inspected, cleaned and made available for another child to play with.

Given the increased demand for adaptive toys, a lending library may not be needed for much longer, Aceros said. He added that he believes accessibility of play is the way of the future — it is a trend that is not going away.

“I think there is no turning back,” Aceros said. “There is going to be a big paradigm shift in the therapy world where therapists are recommending this technology for kids at very young ages.”

Published on November 11, 2015 at 11:00 pm

Contact Brigid: brkenned@syr.edu