For the Lavelle School for the Blind in the Bronx, the Ability Project joined with Bridging Education and Art Together (B.E.A.T.), whose groundbreaking program Beat Rockers works with blind and visually impaired students to develop confidence through music. The competition, which coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, resulted in sixty-three proposals for software, wearable, and other technology solutions from developers in sixteen states and fifteen countries aimed at enhancing the lives of people with disabilities.
In 2015, the program partnered with AT&T to lead the ConnectAbility Challenge, a three-month technology challenge designed to spur innovation for people with physical, social, emotional, and cognitive disabilities. The Ability Project has developed several ventures in partnership with New York City advocacy groups and agencies. Inside NYU Tandon’s Media and Games Network (MAGNET), where the Ability Project is located. Collaboration, rather than problem solving in silos, produces more creative results.
Participatory research ensures access to the critical knowledge of those living with disabilities while also offering opportunities for those without disabilities to better understand what life is like for their collaborators.
Among the Ability Project’s fundamental principles is that technology serves people best when they participate in its design. Classes in the basics of methodology in assistive technology, accessible design and development, research, prototyping, and user interaction/experience design for museums round out the program’s offerings. Students across three of NYU’s schools comprise the Ability Project whose majors range from occupational therapy and integrated digital media to interactive telecommunications. A variety of students and professionals-engineers, designers, educators, speech and occupational therapists, and individuals with disabilities-work together to create opportunities for teaching, learning, and research. Pictured above are some Ability Project prototype solutions for museum wayfinding.Įstablished in 2013, the New York University Ability Project is an interdisciplinary research space dedicated to the intersection between disability and technology, with an aim to foster collaboration among individuals with disabilities, community organizations, and NYU students and faculty. This technique is utilized throughout pedestrian avenues in New York city and around the world. Creating raised surfaces or textures in the museum can enable people with visual impairments to become aware of installations around them.
Testing tactiles: NYU students test out the viability of a tactile wayfinding prototype as part of an Ability Project class.
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