From jar openers to key grippers, devices designed by UF students help people with disabilities » College of Public Health & Health Professions

A man with short gray hair, wearing black framed glasses and a navy blue t-shirt, sits in a wheelchair and holds up a black zippered pouch in his left hand while pointing at the zipper with his right, mid-speech. — Dug Jones, a Gainesville resident and longtime collaborator with the Department of Occupational Therapy, talks about the plastic bracket designed to stabilize his wheelchair bag with the students who designed and 3D-printed it. Photo by Ashleigh Lucas

By Erin Jester

While access has improved for people with disabilities, small inconveniences still exist everywhere. To solve that — piece by piece — students from the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions and the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering are helping design 3D-printed assistive devices for locals with unique needs.

The devices community members asked for are simple — a specialized jar opener, a key gripper, an adjustable iPad stand and a phone stabilizer — items that are hard to find because they aren’t manufactured on a large scale like wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs.

A black and white 3D printing schematic for an assistive key grip device. — After the collaborative design phase, engineering students created the plans to 3D-print the assistive devices. Photo courtesy of GRiP

Living without the smaller items might not be the biggest problem in the world, “but it is a daily nuisance,” said Gainesville resident Dug Jones, a participant in the project. “We are at a point where so many of the really critical needs have been addressed, so we can turn our attention to more quality-of-life things.”

During the fall, UF Doctor of Occupational Therapy students met with community participants and Generational Relief in Prosthetics, or GRiP — an interdisciplinary student organization, funded by the Department of Biomedical Engineering, that provides free 3D-printed assistive devices to people who might otherwise not be able to get them due to cost or availability.

Becky Piazza, O.T.D., OTR/L, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy, had already been thinking about partnering with the group when she met GRiP president and fourth-year biomedical engineering student Saanvi Kodiganti on a UF RecSports hiking trip in the Alps last summer. Kodiganti was excited to involve occupational therapy students who could help identify new, helpful types of assistive devices.

“We all have different skill sets,” Kodiganti said. “It’s like two pieces of a puzzle that get to come together and make really cool products for people who are in need.”

To find local participants for the project, Piazza asked UF Health’s Office of Interprofessional Education to solicit volunteers from Putting Families First, a course that connects UF students with families to help them maintain or improve their health.

“One of the luxuries of being at UF is the endless number of opportunities to collaborate,” Piazza said.

A woman with short white hair, wearing glasses, gray active wear and gray sneakers, sits in a reclining chair in her living room. There is a wedge elevating her right leg above the footrest of the chair. — Margaret Crum helped design a wedge to keep her leg elevated in her reclining chair. Photo courtesy of Rebecca Piazza

Students visited clients in their homes to hear their ideas for assistive devices, which was an unusual and valuable opportunity, second-year occupational therapy student Paige Zolecki said.

“In other clinical scenarios, they may describe their home, but that’s not something we ever get to see,” Zolecki said. “It gave us a unique opportunity to see how they interact day to day.”

Zolecki and her team met with Newberry resident Margaret Crum, who had some ideas about items that could help as a person’s balance, strength and mobility decline with age.

Crum contributed two potential designs: a wedge to keep her leg elevated in her reclining chair and a device to stabilize a bottle of nail polish while painting her nails. The wedge, which will hook onto the chair frame and be coated with nonslip material to keep the leg in place, was chosen for production.

After the initial design phase, GRiP created blueprints for the items and began 3D-printing and distributing them in the spring.

Seen from below, three students lean over a wheelchair and attach a zipper bag to the bottom of the seat. — Engineering students (left to right) Ryan Lomaglio, Hannah Burdzy and Katya Tipps replace the zipper bag on Dug Jones’s wheelchair after attaching a plastic bracket that will allow Jones to open the bag with one hand. Photo by Ashleigh Lucas

Jones received one of the simplest items: a bracket to stabilize the wheelchair bag he has used daily for 10 years to hold his phone, driver’s license and other essentials. The cloth bag hangs under the seat of his wheelchair and requires Jones to reach down with both hands — one to hold the bag in place and one to unzip it.

An initial prototype of the bracket broke, so GRiP re-printed it with a slight design revision and a different type of plastic. After a few minutes of installation, Jones was able to lean over and unzip the bag with one hand.

“The goal has been accomplished,” Jones said.

GRiP and Piazza plan to continue the collaboration next year, with hopes to expand so more students can participate.

“This has been a really enriching opportunity for our engineers to experience the clinical side of assistive technology,” Kodiganti said.