Teaching Digital Fabrication to Early Intervention Specialists for Designing Their Own Tools
Florian Güldenpfennig, Peter Fikar, Roman Ganhör · 2020 · Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '20) · doi:10.1145/3373625.3418050
Summary
This demonstration paper describes a co-design project in which researchers from New Design University and TU Wien taught basic digital fabrication skills to four experienced early intervention therapists who work with children with cerebral visual impairment (CVI). CVI is an umbrella term for visual deficits caused by brain damage, affecting visual perception, acuity, and cortical image processing, often accompanied by deficits in learning, cognition, mobility, and development. The therapists, each with over ten years of experience, support children from their first weeks of life through age six, using exercises and specialized materials — including light tables, high-contrast patterns, and flashlights — to stimulate the visual system and activate developmental progress. The researchers' motivation was threefold: to kick off the co-design relationship by working together on a shared making activity, to demonstrate the capabilities of digital fabrication tools such as laser cutters and 3D printers, and to generate initial design ideas for technologically augmented therapeutic toys. The training was structured in three phases: an initial meeting to understand the therapists' material needs and crafting practices, a hands-on workshop building a small light table from laser-cut wooden parts and off-the-shelf flashlights, and a follow-up session teaching simple vector graphics creation for laser cutting. The therapists contributed their domain expertise by bringing templates and sketches, resulting in prototypes including acrylic jigsaw puzzles, an illuminated windmill puzzle designed to be used on light tables or tablet screens, and a propeller attachment using a 3D-printed fidget spinner to engage children' motor skills.
Key findings
The most significant and unexpected finding was that the therapists continued to independently use their newly acquired digital fabrication skills long after the formal project ended. One year later, at a social reunion, the researchers discovered that the therapists were sending their own vector templates to suppliers for laser cutting, creating customized therapeutic materials on their own. This unplanned outcome demonstrated that even a relatively brief introduction to digital fabrication tools can sustainably empower domain experts to address their own needs. During the project itself, the making workshops served multiple functions: they facilitated relationship-building between researchers and therapists who had not previously met, created a shared understanding of the design space by bridging therapeutic expertise with technical fabrication capabilities, helped manage expectations about what could realistically be produced, and yielded concrete prototypes including light tables, puzzle sets, and building blocks. The collaborative process revealed a productive interplay where therapists' prototyping work and researchers' fabrication skills complemented each other — for example, when the researchers 3D-printed a custom fidget spinner component to complete the therapists' windmill design.
Relevance
This paper offers a compelling model for how digital fabrication and maker methodologies can be applied in accessibility and therapeutic contexts. For practitioners, the key takeaway is that teaching basic fabrication skills to therapists and disability professionals — rather than simply designing solutions for them — can create lasting, independent capacity for producing customized assistive materials. This is particularly relevant given that early intervention and therapy work frequently requires highly specialized, individualized tools that are not commercially available. The study also demonstrates the value of hands-on making as a co-design method, showing that shared fabrication activities can be more effective than traditional workshops for building rapport, exchanging knowledge, and establishing productive design partnerships. While the paper is brief (a 3-page demonstration paper) and involves only four participants, it raises important questions about scalability and how digital fabrication training might be integrated into professional development for therapists, educators, and other accessibility practitioners working with children.
Tags: digital fabrication · DIY assistive technology · co-design · early intervention · cerebral visual impairment · therapeutic toys · children · visual impairment · maker culture · participatory design