Category: Uncategorized

Since I was able to come in person again this week, I got to play around with the Swell form, testing Spandita’s instruction manual. I was not expecting it to be such a quick process, but to my suprise I was able to figure it out relatively quickly. I kept track of a few of the questions I had that were not addressed in Spandita’s instructions— 

1. Do I have to draw it myself?
2. Where’s the switch
3. Put in printer face up or down
4. How to know if I should run it through again

Other than these, the manual was very clear and helpful. I am excited to get to use it more, and possibly work on creating tactile stickers with it for next semester! 

Finally got to come in person to the space which was awesome!!! Played around a lot with the doors, and realized that they are pretty messed up… atatching links I used below. Next steps are working on the main doors, which are not as broken, making sure that people know how to correctly operate them. 

https://www.recorddoors.com/en/recorducationVideos

5100 Series Automatic Sliding Doors by record-USA

Really hoping to get to come in person soon to start tinkering around with the doors! I have been a little stuck since I do not completely understand what it is that I am working with, but I have been looking up the specific brand of doors and reviews of them to see what problems other people also had with them. Videos have definitely been helpful as well in trying to visualize the potential problems. Hopefully I will start coming up with solutions as soon as I get in to the space in person. 

This week I just did some more research and comparison into all the different types of suction handles we can try on the sensor doors in the Ability project. I have been looking into different types of suction cups, and what works best on what material and is the strongest/sturdiest. I found one link that summed everything up perfectly in charts which made it easy to refer back to also. Based on that I chose the ones that seemed most ergonomic to be easiest to use for people with a range of abilities and limited dexterity/mobility. 

This week I spent more time looking into how the door works since the manual was not sufficient enough for me. I found a few helpful links, but I don’t think that I will really understand it enough to tinker with or modify it at all until I am able to make it into the Ability Project space in person and play around with it. I also looked for different handles that we can order for the door to make it open more easily. I compared a ton of different suction-cup handle attachments, and I am attaching a link to the one that seemed the best ergonomically, strongest, and overall best reviews which is the one I think we should try first.

This week I read through the automatic door manual (attatched below), trying to figure out the basic mechanics of it and understand how the door works. The manual did not have as much as I had hoped it would- it mostly was about safety checks. I definitely need to search online for other manuals and/or explanations of these automatic doors and how they work. Hopefully I will also be able to come in to the physical space soon to play around with the doors to get my own understanding of the ins and outs of them.

record-usa sliding door owners manual

My goals for this week are to review my blog from last semester, refresh myself on all the research that I did, and look through all the potential projects for this semester to see what interests me and start brainstorming some ideas.

I’m so excited to be back working on the EAT VIP team this semester, and looking through the list of projects, I am getting even more excited! I definitely want to be involved in the physical space of the Ability Project, rather than the website, creating any of the projects that are part of making the space as accessible as possible. I would love to work on anything that is using CAD/3D printing. I would really love to be a part of the team that works on the automatic door trigger, since I did a project once that was somethinig similar. I also think it would be so cool to design it and figure out what works best. I would also want to contribute somewhat to the multisensory room this semester, since it is what I focused on last semester and I thought it was so cool and interesting. Also, I worked at an overnight camp this summer, and just by chance they were creating their own version of an outdoor multisensory space, which was super exciting for me since I had just done a lot of research on it. So being able to continue with that would also be great for me. 

To wrap up what I have been working on this semester, I wanted to make sure that everything that I learned and all the resources that I found to be useful were organized and included on my blog for easy access. I reread the materials and sorted them based on what they would be most useful for in the future. I also went back through all my research notes to make sure that there was nothing that I left out. My goal was to organize all the information and resources that I used throughout the semester, for others to benefit from them in the future. 

This week I focused more on the academic literature surrounding the benefits of sensory rooms and the research behind it. I had definitely read some before, but I mostly was focusing on articles written by people who work in this field and parents of individuals with disabilities. There is a lot of research about sensory rooms in academic or therapeutic environments, but I have yet to find much about sensory rooms in settings like a dentist office, or for the purpose of helping in these non-academic/therapeutic settings.