Jeffrey Ruffing, Zijian Huang, Grishma Thakrar, Yaoyao Zhou
Community Living and Support Services (CLASS) is an independent organization located in Pittsburgh that provides community services to people with disabilities. As part of their curriculum they offer a number of community skills classes that assist adults with disabilities in gaining valuable life skills. Many of the students who are in the art class have some type of disability that affects their ability to ambulate. The main problem that our group has observed is the free-standing easel which is not designed for the wheelchair population. The issues included having a base that didn’t allow for the wheelchair user to get as close to the easel as was necessary. The mechanisms for adjusting the height and angle of the device were also not very precise. Essentially the device served a purpose but was not meeting the needs that were required by the people who were using it. We decided to design an accessible easel which is versatile and accessible for wheelchair users. It can be adjusted according to the height of a client’s wheelchair
and can also be adjusted at different angles to be able to accommodate client’s preferences to work on. The large degree of adjustability and durability make this product an ideal alternative to other commercially available products on the market that claim to be designed for accessibility. There is also the option for children with disabilities to use this easel as an alternative desk setup for performing schoolwork and other classroom activities.