Tuesday, August 08, 2006
CITTI Project lives on!
Contributed by Sonia Thacher
Greetings from an internet cafe in Ambato, down the street from several barbecue joints which offer the cuy that Dennis so wanted to try. (Osima's going for it sometime this week...)
We four interns have had a producive couple of days. After getting into Ambato late Saturday night, we spent most of Sunday shopping for and making materials. On the menu: head wands, hand splints, hand sticks, and mouth sticks for Asoplejicat, and communication cards/boards/whatevers for Querro. Beth and I showed impressive restraint by walking away from a virtually ready-made mouth stick (plastic knitting needle--my god, it was perfect!) on the grounds that it was too expensive, at $3.25 a pop, to be replicated easily. Instead, we went the meat-skewers and silicon route, with a nice soft toothbrush handle to bite on. Andrea and Osima went right to work, and we had three good models (one of each thing, minus the handstick) ready before dinner; Beth documented everything and wrote up a how-to booklet, while I hit up the papeleria for pictures, plastic, tape, and glue.
Today, we went to Asoplejicat to show them our models and teach them how to replicate. Dion, the PT from Querro, joined us, and was a great help. Unfortunately, Mercedes (the goddess of the organization who showed us around last time) is in the hospital with something I don't understand when it`s said to me in Spanish: she'll be all right, but she's currently indisposed. Several other folks were there, though, and our models were very well received. We set up a workspace and made more materials, side by side with the folks from Asoplejicat; as clients dropped by, many pulled up alongside us and joined in as well. It was a great chance to really share ideas and adaptations: they had many suggestions and alterations they wanted to make. Since the only thing I can do around leather goods and rubber cement is make my fingers stick together, I spent most of that time checking out the accesibility features on their computers: rather than reconfigure each one for maximum accessibility, I typed up and printed out (in Spanish, thanks to Adam) instructions and information about what each feature could do for various users. My rationale: sticky keys blow when you don't really need them.
After lunch (mmm, fresh blackberry juice!), we headed to the sheltered workshop, aka the chew toy factory. One gentleman from the computer center had requested that we look at the work being done there in terms of increasing accessibility; he believes that individuals without the fine motor control necessary to complete the whole task of making the dog toys might still be very interested in doing a part. We did a task analysis with mixed results: most of the steps simply CAN'T be made less motorically complex without major financial outlays (paper-cutter strong enough to slice rawhide, anyone?), and the ones that can be done by someone without a lot of manual dexterity happen for about 2 seconds in the middle of the process. Options, which we will present, include completely changing the current start-to-finish model into an assembly line and delegating one person with less control to pack the chew toys at the end of the process. The challenge for us was to set aside our training in "full inclusion--everyone participates" long enough to ask the hard questions about whether our suggestions would help the business function AS A BUSINESS, not a day program: I know how to make it so everyone can get involved, but I can't guarantee that it streamlines the process. And at two cents a chew toy, there's no room to play around.
We also made some observations about positioning and the height of the tables, and politely but firmly let one gentleman know that, no, we weren't actually there with the express purpose of buying him a new wheelchair. Personally, I left feeling a bit sad at how little I was actually able to help: sometimes, there just aren't the answers people hope you can give them. I consoled myself with the knowledge that Osima was able to make a tangible contribution: looking at the doors for accessibility and fixing a light so you could turn it on and off without first reattaching loose wires. The center is in the poorest, most crime-ridden sectorof Ambato, and fixing a broken window is also on the list so that they can safely house any equipment they might acquire in the future: in this case, there is such a thing as TOO MUCH accessibility.
Tommorrow, 3 of us are heading to Querro while Osima wraps up Huambalo, with help from Adam. And from there...stay tuned! (It is, after all, an emergentdesign...)
Greetings from an internet cafe in Ambato, down the street from several barbecue joints which offer the cuy that Dennis so wanted to try. (Osima's going for it sometime this week...)
We four interns have had a producive couple of days. After getting into Ambato late Saturday night, we spent most of Sunday shopping for and making materials. On the menu: head wands, hand splints, hand sticks, and mouth sticks for Asoplejicat, and communication cards/boards/whatevers for Querro. Beth and I showed impressive restraint by walking away from a virtually ready-made mouth stick (plastic knitting needle--my god, it was perfect!) on the grounds that it was too expensive, at $3.25 a pop, to be replicated easily. Instead, we went the meat-skewers and silicon route, with a nice soft toothbrush handle to bite on. Andrea and Osima went right to work, and we had three good models (one of each thing, minus the handstick) ready before dinner; Beth documented everything and wrote up a how-to booklet, while I hit up the papeleria for pictures, plastic, tape, and glue.
Today, we went to Asoplejicat to show them our models and teach them how to replicate. Dion, the PT from Querro, joined us, and was a great help. Unfortunately, Mercedes (the goddess of the organization who showed us around last time) is in the hospital with something I don't understand when it`s said to me in Spanish: she'll be all right, but she's currently indisposed. Several other folks were there, though, and our models were very well received. We set up a workspace and made more materials, side by side with the folks from Asoplejicat; as clients dropped by, many pulled up alongside us and joined in as well. It was a great chance to really share ideas and adaptations: they had many suggestions and alterations they wanted to make. Since the only thing I can do around leather goods and rubber cement is make my fingers stick together, I spent most of that time checking out the accesibility features on their computers: rather than reconfigure each one for maximum accessibility, I typed up and printed out (in Spanish, thanks to Adam) instructions and information about what each feature could do for various users. My rationale: sticky keys blow when you don't really need them.
After lunch (mmm, fresh blackberry juice!), we headed to the sheltered workshop, aka the chew toy factory. One gentleman from the computer center had requested that we look at the work being done there in terms of increasing accessibility; he believes that individuals without the fine motor control necessary to complete the whole task of making the dog toys might still be very interested in doing a part. We did a task analysis with mixed results: most of the steps simply CAN'T be made less motorically complex without major financial outlays (paper-cutter strong enough to slice rawhide, anyone?), and the ones that can be done by someone without a lot of manual dexterity happen for about 2 seconds in the middle of the process. Options, which we will present, include completely changing the current start-to-finish model into an assembly line and delegating one person with less control to pack the chew toys at the end of the process. The challenge for us was to set aside our training in "full inclusion--everyone participates" long enough to ask the hard questions about whether our suggestions would help the business function AS A BUSINESS, not a day program: I know how to make it so everyone can get involved, but I can't guarantee that it streamlines the process. And at two cents a chew toy, there's no room to play around.
We also made some observations about positioning and the height of the tables, and politely but firmly let one gentleman know that, no, we weren't actually there with the express purpose of buying him a new wheelchair. Personally, I left feeling a bit sad at how little I was actually able to help: sometimes, there just aren't the answers people hope you can give them. I consoled myself with the knowledge that Osima was able to make a tangible contribution: looking at the doors for accessibility and fixing a light so you could turn it on and off without first reattaching loose wires. The center is in the poorest, most crime-ridden sectorof Ambato, and fixing a broken window is also on the list so that they can safely house any equipment they might acquire in the future: in this case, there is such a thing as TOO MUCH accessibility.
Tommorrow, 3 of us are heading to Querro while Osima wraps up Huambalo, with help from Adam. And from there...stay tuned! (It is, after all, an emergentdesign...)
