Carleton is hosting the conference, the theme of which is Making it Happen: From Intention to Action. It embraces the positive progress in creating accessible and inclusive communities and brings together a diverse leadership collective to share achievement and create action.

Proposals must fall under one or more of these topics

• Improving community access through innovative technologies
• New developments in sensor technology
• Sensor Technology: Invasive or Empowering?
• Motivation beyond the Minimum: From compliance to competitive advantage
• An Integrated Strategy for the Design of urban outdoor spaces?
• Retrofitting for accessibility: Case studies of community infrastructure retrofit projects
• Collaborating on accessible communities
• Making a Difference: governments in action to improve community accessibility
• Legislation and its impact
• Trends and opportunities in the design and construction industry
• A new world order: the evolution of impact of accessibility polices around the world
• Become a disability-smart organization: How to recruit the best candidates with and without disabilities
• Delivering your business goals by creating an inclusive environment
• The win-win: benefits of major international events on community accessibility
• Differentiation and marketing; how to showcase your accessibility to attract new consumers
• “A World of Good Practice” sessions for our themes: accessible communities, innovation and technology as well as employment. This is a fast-paced type of presentation making for dynamic sessions that will spark lively conversations. Presenters will have 8 minutes to present slides in a rapid-fire presentation

A group of four undergraduate industrial design students are crediting their final-year project, which had them visiting “end users” in Africa, with going beyond their expectations.

The four worked in close collaboration with local stakeholders in Kasese, Uganda, to improve the design of products such as a hand-operated tricycle for the disabled in rural Uganda.

“When we started, we had a lot of assumptions and our heads were filled with questions,” says student Ruby Hadley. “Sending a drawing to Uganda and then seeing it as a reality when I arrived and being able to work with the manufacturer (welder and artisan Kio Muikiika), was a learning experience so much more than I expected.”

The Design Innovation for Disability in Kasese project, funded by a $50,000 grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), brought together the students, their instructor Stephen Field, Bjarki Hallgrimsson, acting director of the School of Industrial Design, Navin Parekh of CanUgan Disability Support Project, Carleton’s READ Initiative (Research, Education, Accessibility and Design), and experts with experience in design and disability for low-income communities and developing countries, specifically Noel Wilson of Catapult Design and Aaron Wieler of Whirlwind Wheelchairs.

“There’s a movement in the design field called ‘Design for the Other 90 Per Cent,’” says project leader Hallgrimsson, who saw the opportunity to work with Parekh and the Kasese District Union of Persons with Disabilities (KADUPEDI).

“We applied for funding from IDRC and approached Stephen Field with the idea for a fourth-year project. Then we brought in the experts (Wilson and Wieler) to gain insight.”

It was important, Hallgrimsson stresses, that the end users of the products be involved in the design process, and so he and Field, the students and Parekh made the trek to Uganda in February.

Encountering the manufacturers and users of her design who were “half a world away” was “something very real and new” for student Alyssa Wongkee, who started to work on improvements for the existing design on the computer (CAD).

Carmen Liu, who designed a maize mill for Ugandans who earn their living grinding nuts and maize, found it challenging to design outside her comfort zone. “I definitely sharpened my skill of working and communicating with people from different cultures, backgrounds and needs. I like the idea of designing in a new way. It has widened my scope.”

The students went straight to work in his first week of school by building a full-scale prototype using a quarter-scale model of Kio’s design. To better understand the issues of the eventual users, Andrew Theobald bound his legs and initiated a coffee-selling business pedalling around the campus on a prototype tricycle.

“Going to Uganda was eye-opening,” says Theobald. “It was so different from what I expected. I fell in love with the country. I saw so many opportunities for someone in our profession, not only to design as a humanitarian effort, but for the many needs that can be solved through the application of design.”

KADUPEDI co-ordinator Balouku Peter, who visited Carleton’s campus at the end of April, points out that the students’ designs are “improving the economy of the people. The minority tend to be left out and sometimes things are done for us, but they’re not the way we need them done. Working directly with the people has made a lot of difference.”

The students returned from Uganda with a new understanding, says Field. “It’s been a huge learning curve and an incredible learning opportunity. What these four have started is going to be a hard act to follow.”

READ director Dean Mellway explains the concept of the initiative “is to build Carleton’s leadership in the disability area, and demonstrate that we have an expertise and are willing to collaborate.”

Hallgrimsson adds, “Our biggest challenge will be making the project sustainable on a year-to-year basis. We have really set something in motion. What the students did blew me away.”

Building on Carleton’s well-established reputation as a leader in providing access to students with disabilities, the READ Initiative endeavors to propel Carleton into a global leadership role in promoting a world that is truly accessible and inclusive.

“The READ Initiative is proud to welcome the Lieutenant Governor as its Honorary Patron,” said President Roseann O’Reilly Runte. “His strong leadership in accessibility will be most significant as we bring the wealth of expertise at Carleton on accessibility to play, benefitting people around the world. ’’

Among many activities planned for the years ahead is an International Summit on Accessibility that will be held in Ottawa in June 2014.

The Lieutenant Governor has championed disability issues on many fronts and for many years. Having lived with polio and post-polio syndrome since the age of three, he has broken through social barriers and become a role model and a leader on the international stage.

About the READ Initiative

A team of industrial design students at Carleton University are work at perfecting a hand-cranked bike built for Ugandans with disabilities by their fellow countryman, Nelson “Kio” Mukiika.

“We were amazed he was producing these bikes for $170 a piece,” said Dean Mellway, Acting Director of the Research, Education, Accessibility and Design initiative at Carleton University. “He’s built over 50 of them from old bikes now in his local machine shop in Kasese, one of the poorest areas of Uganda.”

A little more than a year ago, Mellway found out about Mukiika through an Ottawa initiative called CanUgan which had been helping pay for the bikes. Mellway thought Carleton’s students could help and got the International Development Research Centre on board.

“We took the design and tried to learn what it would be like to be Kio,” said Andrew Theobald, a fourth year industrial design student working on the project. “He’s a self-taught welder and works with little equipment. He doesn’t work with blueprints. He uses his fingers to measure.”

Industrial design students Andrew Theobald, Alyssa Wongkee, Ruby Hadley and Carmen Liu are working to perfect a hand-cranked tricycle for disabled Ugandans.

Roughly 2.4 million people with disabilities in Uganda live in chronic poverty without the means of making a livelihood. The bikes, Mellway said, give them mobility and the chance to earn wages.

To design a bike like the one created by Mukiika, the students had to limit their options. “We would usually create parts to exact measure,” said Theobald. “But we built this prototype with hacksaws. We wanted to learn a design empathy with Kio.”

Each bike he builds is a one-off since they’re made from the scraps of broken bikes. “I looked into how he manufactures the tricycles,” said Alyssa Wongkee, “to see if he could bring some of the principles of mass manufacturing into his process to make it faster and easier to build.”

The students have already come up with a major design improvement, said course instructor Stephen Field. “They figured out you could develop a new backbone for the steering and chain.”

Next Monday, the students will be meeting with design experts from San Francisco and will be joined by Ugandans participating in the project via. Skype.

“These are very smart people in Uganda and we’re trying to design with them, not designing for them,” said Field. “They’ve done so much with so little.”

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