Noam Platt on Why Inclusive Innovation Can Change the World EP 467

This episode explores the transformative power of assistive technology and how inclusive innovation can significantly improve the lives of individuals with disabilities.

1. Inclusive Innovation's Impact: Platt emphasizes how assistive technology can drastically improve the quality of life for individuals with disabilities by fostering greater independence.
2. The Role of Education: Sharing his educational path, Platt stresses the importance of creativity and interdisciplinary collaboration in developing new solutions.
3. Community Engagement: The episode highlights the significance of community involvement and the empowerment of individuals through accessible technologies.
4. Technological Advancements: Discusses advancements in 3D printing and how they revolutionize the production of assistive devices, making them more affordable and adaptable.
5. Future Aspirations: Platt expresses his aspirations for the future, including expanding his organization and increasing the availability of assistive technologies globally.

1. Introduction to Noam Platt and Inclusive Innovation

Noam Platt discusses his background and the mission of his organization, Make Good, which focuses on creating assistive technologies to aid individuals with disabilities. John R. Miles: "Today I sit down with the incredible Noam Platt to dive into the world of assistive technology and social impact."

2. Educational Journey and Inspirational Beginnings

Platt shares his transition from studying architecture to applying his design skills to assistive technology, inspired by real-world needs. Noam Platt: "Design school is all about teaching you how to think, not necessarily teaching you how to be an architect."

3. Impactful Projects and Collaborations

Detailed discussion on specific projects, including mobility trainers and partnerships with universities to enhance the practical application of his innovations. Noam Platt: "Through his partnership, Noam and his team have not only transformed the lives of countless individuals but also sparked a movement towards greater accessibility."

4. Challenges and Achievements

Platt reflects on the challenges faced in the field of assistive technology and celebrates the achievements, including widespread recognition and the scalability of his projects. Noam Platt: "It's really about making sure that they can participate."

5. Vision for the Future

The episode concludes with Platt outlining his future goals for expanding the reach and impact of assistive technologies. Noam Platt: "We're really on the precipice of a large transformation in accessibility."

1. Explore 3D Printing: Engage with local makerspaces to learn about 3D printing and its applications in creating custom assistive devices.
2. Volunteer in Accessibility Projects: Look for opportunities in your community where you can contribute to projects that improve accessibility.
3. Educate Yourself on Disabilities: Gain a better understanding of the challenges faced by individuals with disabilities to better advocate for inclusive design.
4. Support Nonprofits in Assistive Technology: Donate or volunteer at organizations like Make Good, which focus on developing assistive technologies.
5. Promote Inclusive Practices: Advocate for inclusive practices in your workplace and community to enhance accessibility for all.

In this episode of Passion Struck, host John R. Miles interviews Noam Platt, the founder of MakeGood, an organization dedicated to revolutionizing the lives of individuals with disabilities through assistive design. The discussion highlights the power of open-source design and 3D printing in making assistive technology more accessible and affordable. Noam's collaborations with Tulane University and LSU have not only accelerated the production of assistive technologies but also provided students with hands-on experience in making a difference in their communities. The episode showcases heartwarming stories of children benefiting from customized mobility trainers, demonstrating the life-changing impact of assistive technology. Through partnerships and community engagement, Noam and his team are empowering individuals with disabilities and inspiring others to contribute to the field of assistive technology.

People

Noam Platt, John R. Miles

Companies

Make Good

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Noam Platt

Content Warnings:

None

Speaker A
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Speaker A
Coming up next on passion struck. I never considered myself a creative person, and I think it's really about giving yourself permission to dream to a certain respect. Because what we're doing is there's no rules to it. It's very open, right? A 3d printer can make literally anything that fits inside of it.

Speaker C
There's no bounds, really, on what you can do. That is something that I had to learn and cultivate, this sense that everything we make can be something never seen before. We don't have to follow what was there before, and we can do something new every time. Welcome to passion struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R.

Speaker A
Miles, and on the show we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions. On Fridays, we have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEO's, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now let's go out there and become passion struck.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to episode 467 of Passion Struck. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, to be better, and most importantly, make a meaningful impact in the world. I have an exciting announcement. Passion Struck was awarded the gold medal at the Nonfiction Book Awards and was also a winner of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards.

You can purchase it on Amazon, where I just released my my audiobook and also on passionstruck.com dot. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that. We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we put into convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com starterpacks to get started. In case you missed it, earlier this week I interviewed best selling author Ryan Holiday.

Ryan, who is known for his thought provoking works on stoicism and personal growth, discusses his latest groundbreaking book, right thing right now. Good values, good character, good deeds. In this not to be missed conversation, we explore the virtues that make a fulfilled life, how stoicism can address the challenges of modern society, and why doing the right thing matters more than ever in today's world. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews, and if you love today's episode or the one with Ryan, we would appreciate you giving it a five star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners.

Today I sit down with the incredible Noam Platt to dive into the world of assistant technology and social impact. Noam is the founder of Make Good, a trailblazing organization committed to revolutionizing the lives of individuals with disabilities from humble beginnings to becoming a driving force in the field of assistive design. His story is a testament to the power of passion, innovation, and unwavering dedication to making a difference. Noam has dedicated his life to creating custom designed equipment that empowers individuals with disabilities to live their lives to their fullest. And our captivating conversation will delve into Noem's early inspirations, including his time as a counselor and administrator at Camp Dream street, where he gained invaluable insights into the unique needs of children with cerebral palsy.

We'll explore the challenges and triumphs that have shaped his career, from his introduction to architecture to his involvement with international organizations like makers making change and israeli nonprofit Tom Global. But the heart of our discussion lies in Noam's groundbreaking collaboration with Tulane University students to create innovative mobility trainers for children with disabilities. Through his partnership, Noam and his team have not only transformed the lives of countless individuals, but also have sparked a movement towards greater accessibility and affordability in the world of assistive technology. So join us as we uncover the incredible stories behind these life changing projects, explore the intersection of design and social impact and discover what it truly means to make a meaningful difference in the world. Thank you for choosing passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.

Now let that journey begin. How about Cap'n crunch's crunchberries with breakfast? Whoa, dad, we're on crunch island. He's Jean left foot.

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Speaker D
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Speaker A
I am absolutely thrilled today to have Noam Platt on passion struck. Welcome, Noam. Thanks for having me, John. I love the fact that you're here, and I love also the fact that I found you because of one of our listeners who happened to see a video that was done about the work you were doing. So glad we could pull this off.

And I think a great place for us to start is perhaps your origin story. Can you tell the audience a little bit about your childhood and some of your formative experiences? Absolutely. And thanks to the listener for sending that in. That's great.

Speaker C
I grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, pretty small town in Louisiana. And I went to architecture school, and I think this is where kind of the story really begins. Was starting to go to design school, really. Design school is all about teaching you how to think, not necessarily teaching you how to be an architect or how to be in the business of architecture. It's really about how you think and how you apply that thinking to the built environment.

And growing up, I had friends who had disabilities and I worked at a summer camp for kids with disabilities. But only after I finished architecture school did I realize that those design skills and the ability to create and iterate and come up with new ideas is really needed in the world of assistive technology for the disabled community. And really found myself at an inflection point of having all the skills I needed to have a big impact in assistive technology. My family member of mine actually started an organization overseas called Tom Global, which designs this open source assistive technology. And we're talking about wheelchair adaptations, we're talking about devices to help people enjoy their hobbies, things like that that are designed and released for free online with the encouraged to be printed by people who have extra capacity with their 3d printers.

And a lot of this technology uses 3d printers to be made. So this organization has these things called make a thons, where they gather these groups of interdisciplinary people, and we get together for a few days and come up with this new idea in accessibility. And all these teams are led by the need knower. And a need knower is somebody often disabled who has a specific need that needs filled. So I've did a couple of these events in the United States, these Makeathons, as they're called.

And through that work, I discovered that not only do I have all the skills required to be an effective member of this community, but it's actually a lot of fun, too. And it's a really great way to give back to your community and also create a better world. Everything we're designing and bringing into the world, we're creating a more accessible world as we do it. After a couple of those makeathons, I had somebody local in the New Orleans area where I live reach out with a project. It was an adaptive toilet seat, and that really got my organization made good launched.

We started with that project, and really one project led to another, and now we have hundreds of projects. We've completed over 500 different unique devices we've delivered, and we work with multiple health systems, locally and internationally as well. It really started with going into architecture school, but it's really still just beginning, I feel. And we're really, it's a society, I think, really on the precipice of a large transformation and accessibility, and you see it a lot, and it's becoming much more talked about and discussed and worked on by a variety of people. Trey?

Speaker A
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I want to go back into some of your backstory a little bit more, because I think it really influenced some of the work you're doing now. And I wanted to start by talking about Camp Dream street, and I understand you were a former counselor there and administrator. How did that shape your perspective on the needs for children? And I think that camp was specific to cerebral palsy, or was it beyond that as well?

Speaker C
It's a variety of kids there with abilities, so it's mostly focused on cerebral palsy and spina bifida, kids with other conditions there as well. So it's a mix. KFJ was very formative, and I'm very excited this year to be returning for the first time in many years with all our 3d printers and our staff to make stuff for kids. So we're really excited for that. But no, as a young person, you go to camp Dream street.

And the way this camp is structured is we have kids, I think, ages about seven to 1213 who are in the campers, and the counselors are all high schoolers. And so when I was a high schooler, I showed up as a counselor, and they quite literally, the parents drop off their kids. It's a sleepaway camp. And these parents, this might be the first break they get from being full time caretakers for their kids. All year after kids, they're going on vacation, maybe somewhere else, and the kid is like, okay, you're taking care of me for five days.

And as a high schooler, to have that kind of responsibility to take care of somebody with medical needs, who needs help, feeding help, bathing themselves, is overwhelming. But part of that process is learning how to do these things as a young person and growing your empathy and growing your ability to take care of somebody. And so it's really a transformative experience. It's really a fantastic camp. But ultimately, what it taught me as a young person was that kids with disabilities, they're kids first and foremost.

They want to do the same things that every other kid wants to do. They want to swim, they want to ride horses, they want to go fishing, they want to play the gym, they want to cut up with their friends, they want to play music. There's nothing different about it. It's really about making sure that they can participate. And that kind of feeds into what I'm doing now is that it's not necessarily that these kids or people are disabled.

It's the environment that's disabling to them. The reason that place isn't accessible is because the doors are designed incorrectly. It's not necessarily that somebody can't access it. These early experiences that came dream sheet really did inform my pathway forward. I didn't know it at the time.

Often as it is with these things. It doesn't seem apparent when it's happening. But I worked there as a counselor for three years and then as an administrator for a few more years after that and really got to see some of my campers grow up into one. Wonderful adults as well. It's really a fantastic place that is embracing this ethos of treating all kids equally and creating a place for them to just be kids.

Speaker A
Yeah, I don't think we realize, because we are not those people in those shoes, what it's like to have to live with a disability. And there's a restaurant here in St. Petersburg, Florida, where I live, where the owners specifically put in a lift at the bar. That's an automatic way for them to lower it or raise it, depending on if it's an able person who is using a bar stool, or if a person comes up in a wheelchair. And I can't tell you how many disabled people in wheelchairs came to that restaurant because it was the only opportunity that they had to sit at a bar because it doesn't cater to them.

And yet the vast majority of us don't even think of things like that. I wanted to give the audience some perspective and this is one of the causes that I wanted to make the audience aware of. How many children are there living with disabilities and what are some of the most common impediments that they run into? That's a great question. I don't have exact specific numbers for kids.

Speaker C
I will say about, I think it's 1.2 billion people worldwide with disabilities and I think roughly about 20% to 25% of our population disability seen or unseen. Millions of kids, basically. And a lot of the impediments, like I said, are basically there's just a lack of affordable assistive technology. What's made worse, that, yes, they have cerebral palsy and they might have some difficulty with mobility, is that, oh, there's not even an option for us to buy something that would help them with their mobility pediment that I see with kids. There aren't a lot of good seating options for them as far as sitting on the floor, being supportive, or like the small mobility trainers that your listener saw and sent to you.

This is something that doesn't really exist before we started making them, and our partners at Tom Global helped design it and produce these devices. So it's really the simple things that are missing in a lot of these people's lives. A good friend of mine recently started making and selling large scale, 3d printed seats for kids to sit on. The floor and be able to interact with their peers in playtime on the floor. And I've been around when he's delivered these to some local families that I connected him with, and I get to see these kids light up first time.

These severely disabled kids are able and at floor level, and they're actually part of their families more. They're part of their friends circles more, they're more active at schools. Like I said earlier, I feel like a lot of the impediments are in the built environment, not necessarily with people's bodies. And then, of course, the affordability of assistive technology to buy a pediatric wheelchair is four to five to six, $7,000. Everything we make can be made very inexpensively with very little technical experience as well.

For instance, the toddler mobility trainers that we made, the price is about $100 to $150 in the parts, and we're working on getting that down as well. I think it can get down to almost $30, which is very affordable. And it's something that can be independently purchased by a family member. They don't have to work with their insurance companies, right? This is the reason why we have to make these in the first place.

Insurance company won't cover a wheelchair for your young child unless they have this catch 22. And how do you get proof of a child effectively using a wheelchair if they don't have one? So these are called toddler mobility trainers, these small wheelchairs that we make because they provide training for young kids in the mechanisms of using a wheelchair and the mechanics of using a wheelchair and the physicality of it. And then those videos that the parents and their caregivers take of these children using the wheelchairs are then proof positive for the insurance companies to get them something more durable if they wish to do so. That's really the impediments.

They're much more technical, commercial, administrative than they are physical. I was going to ask you about the reimbursement or that compensation program from the medical system, because, as I understand it, oftentimes you have to have a person who specializes in evaluating your disabilities and recommending that you need medically necessary equipment before they're going to authorize the prescription to get that for you, which to me, it's like being a first time author and trying to get a publisher, yet you don't have any samples to share with them before. To me, it's the same thing. It's a chicken and the egg problem. Is that something that, as you were describing, a lot of people run into.

That issue oh, absolutely. It's a huge problem. And because what we're doing with assistive technology and what's called do it yourself assistive technology, it's such a new thing, it's a new concept, it's a new field that many of these established institutions and vendors, let's say vendors like the wheelchair vendors, they're not aware even of what we're doing. We work completely outside of the insurance system. We're not getting reimbursements for anything.

Everything we do is donation based and it's free for our users. It's amazing though, because we're this new system, that we don't really have any rules either. We can say we can meet people and meet our users exactly where they're at and solve their problems specifically for them. A great example of this is really good friend Doctor Ashley Volion. She's a professor at Tulane and she has cerebral palsy.

And she told me I have a big problem. When I transfer out of my wheelchair, my seatbelt buckle falls on the ground and then inevitably I run over it and it breaks. And then it takes me 510 minutes to stretch to go pick it back up. And she asked her therapist, what do I do about this? And they said, well, you need to learn how to stretch quicker to go pick it up.

So she asked me, what do we do about it? And I say, well, let's just put a little seatbelt dock, a little piece of plastic with a place to dock your seatbelt when you're not using it, it's not buckled in. This is a project that took maybe 2 hours to do between the drawing and the 3d printing, and she uses it every day and it saves her time every day, and it holds the buckle in place. So it's a big success. And I've made a few of these.

So I recently had a conference with all these wheelchair vendors, and I go to this vendor who makes the majority of power wheelchairs, and I show them the buckle piece and I put it on their chair and I show them how it works, and they're absolutely amazed by this and their minds are blown. And they said, all of our users tell us this is a problem, dropping the buckle. And I said, so why does it take somebody like Nate good to find to make the solution and bring it to you for you to actually do something about it? And they didn't really have a good answer. I think they're so focused and these companies are so focused on releasing products and making money, and that's what they do, but it's not necessarily always serving the needs of their users.

So for that reason, we are laser focused on solving people's problems, and we're not focused on commercialization and profit and shareholders and all the other things that these other companies have to worry about. And that gives us the ability to be very flexible and nimble with what we make and how we deploy our resources in a way that truly meets people's needs. And it's not geared towards commercialism or this kind of business side of things. We really are here just to serve our community. If you're on a GLP one, you're probably loving the results.

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Speaker A
We have a lot of listeners to this podcast who are everything from teens to young adults who might be interested in exploring the type of work that you're doing. And I know when I was going through school, I went to the naval Academy, and unfortunately, I didn't get to take naval architecture until I was a junior because that's when it was in our curriculum. We all graduate with an engineering degree, and I absolutely loved it. We took two semesters. We ended up building the prototypes for a yard patrol craft that the winner was selected to become the yard patrol craft of the future for the naval Academy.

And it was such a rewarding experience that I wish I would have known about it to explore that as a career. But how did you find out about this journey into architecture? And then what led you to specialize in assistive design? Thank you. That sounds like a great experience.

Speaker C
So I didn't grow up as somebody who knew he wanted to be an architect or was super interested in architecture, even, quite frankly, didn't even quite understand what architects do or did. The reason I chose architecture as my major, and this is such a great teenage story here, was that I was sitting with my dad at the kitchen table. I went to Louisiana State University, so he had the LSU book open of all the majors, and he's, okay, you really need to pick something. And he starts reading accounting, agriculture, and then he got to architecture, and I said, let's just do that. I'm tired of doing this with you.

I just did everything to I could to get out of that situation, having to sit there with my dad and go through all these majors together. So that's how I chose architecture. And I showed up the first day of class with basically no idea about how to draw. I didn't consider myself creative. I've never designed anything before.

But you can learn all these things and you don't have to be necessarily exceptional. I'm certainly not, certainly average. To do architecture, to be a creative person, it really takes employing curiosity, and that's really what you learn in architecture school, I think, is how to be curious about the world around you. And then you take that a step further and then how do I change the world around me? That's, I think, a great thing.

And being an architect is a wonderful profession. I still am an architect in my day job. I'm a healthcare architect. So I design hospitals and clinics and surgery centers and things like that. And it's a really fascinating field that has a lot of effect on our health.

Different rooms on different sides of a building with the same patients. One will get out two days earlier because of the kind and quality of life they have. And things like that affect your physiology that we're still learning about. And it's still a nascent field in that respect. But when you think about architecture applying to assistive technology, the skills are very similar.

And the main skill is communication with a diverse group of people, architects. Our main function is to be a team leader with, especially healthcare architects, with people with many different backgrounds. So we have to work on buildings with our engineering team, with the medical team, and that's people who are the doctors, who are the nurses, but also the people who are in charge of infection control, who are in charge of cleanliness, who are in charge of supplies, who in charge of it. All these different user groups make up these buildings, and we have to be very adept at working with all of them. And that's the same thing with assistive technology.

You have to be very adept with working with people who have many different skills than you and different backgrounds than you, and communicating effectively with them. So that is the main skill transfer beyond the design and creativity, to me, that is the main skill that you need to be successful is being able to work with a diverse group of people effectively and communicate amongst them really well. Obviously, learning how to design something is very important. But I encourage everybody, even if you don't go to design school or have no experience with this, just to try it. It's a fun process to do what's called iterative design, where you make something, try it out, you see how it fails and you make something again and try it out.

You give yourself permission to fail in these situations. You give yourself permission to mess up. And it's something that you learn, especially when you're doing projects that have novel, never been done before. You're not going to get it right for a long time and it's just part of the process is failing and chipping away at these little problems until you get to a solution that sort of works and you can refine that. That's something I got very comfortable with in architecture.

I made plenty of mistakes in my career. I had plenty of errors that cost money in my career. But eventually you get better at it and you improve. And this is same thing with the system, technology and design. Not every one of my projects is ever even successful.

There's some that I've had to give up on because they're above my technical ability or somebody else can do it better and I pass it on. But it's all part of the learning process for yourself to build your skills and then to share those skills with your community. Thank you for sharing that. And part of my background that many people might not be aware of is I spent about 20 years of my career doing different things in information technology, information security. And probably six years into my career, seven years into it, agile methodology came about.

Speaker A
And so it was completely game changing, moving from the waterfall type of development cycle that we were doing to using iterative one week to two week sprints where you could try things out, experiment, see what the user liked about them or didn't like, and keep reinventing from that. It made things so much faster. Speaking of creativity, I understand that you have a wide range of interest, ranging from fencing to pottery to the 3d modeling that we've talked about. And I wanted to explore this a little bit because I think this whole avenue of creativity is something that a lot of people put to the wayside. And I think it's one of the most important aspects of our life, because to me it leads to strategic thought and putting yourself out there in a different way and expressing yourself.

How has it benefited you in your approach to both your professional work that you're doing and some of your personal interests? That's a great question. Like I mentioned, I never considered myself a creative person. I think it's really about giving yourself permission to dream to a certain respect, because what we're doing is there's no rules to it. It's very open, right?

Speaker C
A 3d printer can make literally anything that fits inside of it. There's no bounds, really, on what you can do. That is something that I had to learn and cultivate, this sense that everything we make can be something never seen before. We don't have to follow what was there before, and we can do something new every time. And when I teach our process to clinicians, which there's many occupational therapists and physical therapists who are very interested in what we're doing, that we've worked with, that are now purchasing 3d printers themselves and learning how to use them.

When I work with them, that's the first thing I say, is that it's, you have to create an open mind and understand that anything you can dream of, you can actually make. And that's really important to free yourself from the bounds of, let's adapt something that's on the commercial market. That's one strategy, and that's how people have done for many years. What we try to practice is, let's invent something new that fills the need that you actually are trying, that solves the problem you're actually trying to solve. So it's really about being able to unlock that sort of free thinking in yourself and separate out a bit of your own prejudices and your own expectations, and really just have a totally open mind for what's going to come with that.

The second thing I like to do is to draw, but I'm not talking about really beautiful technical drawings. Like one of my friends draws these churches in New Orleans, and they're absolutely beautiful. His sketches. That's unbelievable. I am not that guy.

I can't do that kind of thing as fast as he can, as good as he can. But drawing is a tool to work out ideas. And my drawings are very basic. They're diagrams, they're lines, they're circles, they're shading. It's very basic, but it's to understand what's in your mind and trying to get on paper.

Believe it or not, half the time I'm drawing, I don't even know what I'm trying to draw. I just let it happen as I'm drawing. And that's really what I talk about. And a lot of people have written about this, that drawing is a tool to work out ideas, all working drawings for that reason. And I do the same thing when I build little models, too.

Something about moving your hands gets your brain working in a different way that allows you to bring up new ideas to the fore, instead of just sitting there. Thinking about them having this open mind is very important, and just trying to make something like a drawing is also very important. And if listeners want to get involved in do it yourself assistive technology, there are a lot of groups that you can join, specifically makers. Making change is a group in Canada that I've been a member for, and I'm a Louisiana chapter leader for many years. And it's a phenomenal group.

They have a library of open source assistive technology that anybody can download and try out themselves. And so when I'm working with students and they're curious about this, that's the first thing I tell them to do. Download some of this, some of these assistive writing devices, for example, and try them out yourself and see how you like them and what are your thoughts on them. And that's a really great way to start to get involved with this. There's such a huge need for these kinds of things.

For instance, there's a lot of people with arthritis that need help holding pens and pencils. This is a very common thing. We make anybody who has access to a 3d printer, whether that be your house or school or library, this is a great place to start to learn how to use that printer and to learn about assistive technology. So this is another thing we do a lot with schools, is that we show them that their printers can be used to make more than just like toys and tchotchkes or the kind of stuff you typically see. They can be used to make stuff like this, which is a self balancing spoon that's all 3d printed.

It's hard to see there, but we developed this with a hospital system. The healthcare provider asked us for this because they don't have anything on the market that approaches what they needed to do. I think there's lots of opportunities for people of all skills, all age levels, and all backgrounds to really meaningly contribute to the disability assistive technology community. Yeah, and I wanted to go into a little bit more of makers making change, because that's the organization that I saw the video with. What's the organization's primary mission?

Speaker A
You said it was based in Canada and you lead the New Orleans chapter of it. Yes. Makers making change is a branch of the Neil Squire organization in Canada. Neil Squire was a young man who became fully paralyzed, I believe it was in the eighties, and his friends gathered together. They were all engineers, and they created one of the first mouth stick to computer interfaces for him to be able to use a computer.

Speaker C
And so they have this long history in assistive technology. They have a number of grants that has allowed them to design some actually various. Like, I talked about simple things like the spoon and that writing device, because that's really where my skills are. I'm not a big electronics guy, but, like, makers make a change. Has a staff of engineers who have designed open source electronic switches that cost $10,000 to buy on the commercial market, and you can build theirs for a couple hundred bucks.

So they have this really fantastic group of engineers that design assistive technology and release it for free, as well as chapters all over the country and actually all over the world that all do different things in their communities. And probably one of my favorite times every month is that chapter leader meeting with all those groups, because everyone has such a different background, and they all bring different things to their work. My background is in architecture. I like to do things a certain way and work with a certain group of people. But there's teachers who are doing things, really interesting, creative things with their students.

There are people who work at hospitals who are doing really interesting and creative things with their patients. There are people who work at nonprofits, and there's people who are working with other nonprofits on really interesting collaboration. So it's really a big tent. Makers making change, and people are working on lots of different things at a time. One of their main focuses is switch adapting.

And switch adapting is basically the idea of if you have a toy, let's say a stuffed animal that has a button, it makes the animal do something, or maybe it's a bubble gun or something like that. Not every kid is going to be able to grip the bubble gun and pull the trigger and hold it and things like that. So we can adapt the toy and add a switch to it, which is just a big button we can put on somebody's lap or on their wheelchair or on a table, but then when they press the button, it activates the toy. It seems pretty simple, but this is actually a huge need in the country. I have a lot of requests for switch adapted toys, and they're very expensive.

A company will take a $10 toy, add a switch port to it, and charge $90 to a family for that toy. So it becomes very expensive. For people and makers, making change is really big into switch adapting and hacking toys. So every year they have something called hack for the holidays, where they encourage groups of students to get together and switch adapt a bunch of toys, and then you can also make the switches as well. So they have plans for the switches.

They have plans for the toys. They also have a lot of plans for a adaptive joysticks and gaming. They're really big into doing devices for the Xbox and PlayStation and things like that, which are also really cool. So the switch adapting is a big deal and there's always a need in communities for it. And we are actually working with LSU students this month on Switch adapting 25 toys.

That'll be the first Switch adapting that we've done personally, but we're very excited to see it in action. And it is very important to understand that a lot of stuff isn't accessible, but it can be made accessible pretty easily. And once again, this is like, why don't the toy companies just put the switch port on the toy itself from the factory? Like, this is an activism effort that there are people out there leading and trying to get changed as well. If you want to get into switch adapting toys makers making change is a great place to look.

And then adapted design on Instagram. I think you should be able to find them. They are. It's a wonderful man up in Seattle who has a son who is severely disabled, and he is actually, I have a soft spot for him because he's a fellow architect as well. And he has written a book on adapting toys.

Actually have it right here. It's called let's adapt for everyone by adaptive design. And it walks you through step by step how to do this process. And it's really easy for beginners too. And he actually sells a kit of soldering tools and all the little wires you need as well.

So there are lots of opportunities to try these things out for low cost if people are curious to do so. And that is a super cool story. It's so awesome that you're able to adapt these toys so that so many people who wouldn't be able to use them are able to now. And it led me to wonder, how is makers making change or adaptive technology, who you just talked about, how do they go about addressing the gap between the need for assistive technology and its accessibility and affordability? Because that seems to be something you keep coming back to.

Yeah, I think thats the main issue, basically, is that assistive technology slot the word for assistive technology on something and you add a zero at the end of the price. Reality. It's not really a joke. It's a reality of the world. The way we keep costs down is by using 3d printers.

And that's how most people go about this, because the machines, the 3d printers are so good these days. And even in the past couple of years have gotten so good. It's very cheap to make things on them. Something like the spoon I showed you to make with a traditional manufacturing process would probably cost a lot of money just based on the way it's put together. This is like $3 to make on a 3d printer.

So it's all very inexpensive. I'd say adaptive design. The gentleman from Seattle does the same thing. He's basically showing step by step how to adapt things for yourself. So the idea is that people are doing this for themselves or for somebody they don't know, and we're not necessarily buying it from a vendor.

Anytime you want to commercialize something, it's just an expensive endeavor. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of money, and there might not be a fully full. There might not be enough people who need one particular device where it's profitable to do, or maybe it's not profitable to do the communications to reach all of those people. By using open source design and 3d printing, you can take somebody else's work, which is really, the work is in the design work, in my opinion, that's where the real time and effort needs to be spent and reproduce it for very low cost. And so that's how the DIY community and assistive technology functions.

It's a sharing community. Each innovation that comes out, we share with each other. And then the next person improves upon it and then sends it back. And so you end up with this kind of collaborative design process over many, sometimes over many years, that then creates this really useful piece of technology for people that is very low cost. This is exactly how the toddler mobility trainers were designed.

Their original design was very similar to something that you could already get called a Bella's Bumba, which is this nonprofit that was making these small chairs for toddlers. But they didn't quite have enough back support. There were some issues with the design, so they started there and they worked with an international team to redesign this. We're talking about people in Israel, we're actually talking about people also in the West bank working on this with them. We're talking about people in Singapore, Mexico, in the US all contributed to this one design.

And then because of that, the design is really good. So this is something I've brought up a lot in the class. I teach that it pays dividends to take a collaborative design approach. So at make good, we like to have community design events where we'll all get together and build little models together, or drawings and build prototypes together, because we can do what would take me six months of design work. We can do in an afternoon, because when you have all those people working together with different backgrounds, they all bring different things to the table and different ideas to the table that are all really good.

The reason this system works is because people work together on the design work and share it and share the feedback and share the improvements. And that creates a system where if everything was commercialized, nobody would do that, everything would be held privately until it's sold and it's patented and all these kinds of things. But because it's an open source world, we're trying to create the design work. The fidelity of it is very high because there's lots of people providing input throughout the process. And that lets you get from an idea to a design that works actually pretty quickly and pretty cheaply and that keeps the cost down for everybody.

And at the end of the day, you'll end up with a wonderful design that is clinically effective or works really well and the clinicians like it and it's free for anybody to reproduce. So this happened recently with the toddler mobility trainers and this guy named Mohammed in Pakistan, one of my good friends in the US who designs open source wheelchairs, sent me a video of this guy in Pakistan in one of these open source wheelchairs that he designed. And there's Muhammad lives in very rural part of the country in Pakistan. They only have electricity for a couple hours a day. And he's a young man, he's in his twenties and he's disabled, he's a wheelchair user and he leads a community organization supporting disabled people in his region in Pakistan.

He's a wonderful man. He saw our toddler mobility trainers online and he asked for some pictures with the dimensions of the chairs so he can reproduce them in his village. So we sent him what he asked for and two days later he sent me a picture. He sent a video of a young child using one of these chairs in this remote region in Pakistan. And it just goes to show, it's all about that design work.

If that was the summation of the contributions of hundreds of people from all over the world that created this wonderful design that works really well, that then he made using the techniques that he could use. It's not necessarily about, oh, can you 3D print this or can you CNC that? It's really about, here's the design, here's the shape that it needs to be and that's been tested and it works really well. And he put it together and it's a wonderful thing that he's doing for his community. He's made a number of these toddler sized chairs now, in addition to more adult sized chairs as well.

And so that to me, is the ultimate use of our design work is that we all collaborate on something until it's really good and then we share all over the world and people can experience that expertise. They get all that expertise for free and then can use their own techniques and the things they're comfortable doing to reproduce them. And it's been really amazing watching him and his organization embrace us for getting the designs. And he's a master craftsman. This guy can make anything out of wood and he's done a really great job.

And we're proud to contribute financially as well to his organization. Help him get more tools, help him get transport, reliable transportation so he can get supplies from the town he lives near. But that's when I, when I go back to saying the work is in the design work. That's what it is. It's really all that work that people put in throughout the years.

Got this design to a point where it's so good that we can make it in two lane using expensive machinery, and this guy in Pakistan can make it using no power tools, basically just with hand saws. And they both work the same way. Preston, and that's a great example. I know you wanted to talk about international partnerships, so I'm glad you were able to talk about that. And my podcast editor actually lives in Pakistan, so I love that story from that point.

Speaker A
And my web designer is in Nepal, so diverse talents all over the world. And I think that's a great example of how the open source approach you've been talking about is democratizing assistive technology design and production in many different forms. I wanted to make sure I hit on partnerships. I was going to ask you about an international one, so I think we've got that covered. But you've mentioned LSU and Talane University now several times.

How did these collaborations with Tulane and LSU and its students come about? And what role have these partnerships played in helping to maybe accelerate the use of these assistive technologies? That's a great question. I'm only one person, and I also like to shout out to Philip Dunham. He's our head of design and manufacturing as well.

Speaker C
He came on board a few months ago. I guess we're only two people now, we could say, but the partnerships are so important and they came about just by hard work. Right. It was a couple years process to get on Tulane biomedical engineering's radar, working with them, building some trust with them. We're doing smaller projects together.

But what it allows for two things from our perspective. It's we get a lot of wonderful effort from the students, right? They put in their time, they volunteer. And for instance, we're finishing up 20 toddler mobility trainers right now at Tulane, which is a lot like, it's a lot of work to do those, that's five or six more than all of the previous ones we've ever built right. Over the years.

So this is a big effort. So we get to benefit by scaling up our operations to a point where like, we can do a good number of chairs because we have a lot of requests for chairs. But the students, the goal that I'm really interested in is showing the students that they can have a really big impact on communities. This is an opportunity for the students to use their skills directly to help somebody, and they are really engaged by it. This is why I think a lot of people go to school or go into a field like biomedical engineering or architecture.

We've worked with the design school as well at Tulane, is that they want to better their communities. They want to help people in their community who need help. They want to create a better world for tomorrow. This is the idealism I think a lot of people have, which is really good. So the students get this hands on experience, understanding that I can put in this effort and I can change the life of somebody in my community by providing this mobility and independence to them.

And for the students, this is really just the start of their journey. So they're going to take this experience throughout their life, wherever they move to, wherever they go, work and understand they have the skills to improve their communities, to change people's lives. And it doesn't even take that much work. It's not like it takes thousands of hours to make these chairs. It doesn't.

It's a relatively simple process and it has a big impact. And I think a lot of people crave that. They crave that kind of. They crave being that helpfulness and wanting to give back. And so this is a really great opportunity for the students to put their skills into the real world with real people and have a real impact before they graduate.

And our goal, and which is working is to show them they can do that. And then they take the ball where they go move next, where they go work next, and they show their new communities, hey, we can make an impact by doing XYZ, by doing these little things to improve our community. So it's really about, for as much as it is for make good, about creating assistive technology ourselves and distributing it. It's equally about teaching others how to do this process and planting those seeds with them and letting them go and create new things. So we're trying to create this community, this network of people who have these skills and want to share these skills.

And that's really what our partnerships with the students are all about, is giving them an opportunity to see their skills improve their community. And that's an awesome story. And I just wanted to dive in a little bit deeper on these chairs because seeing some of these testimonials, parents have described the chairs as life changing. Could you possibly share a particularly touching or impactful story from your experience helping some of these kids? Yeah, I will.

It's interesting because they're. We're in the process of delivering them. We delivered a few last week. Every few days I'll get a video of a kid zooming around their house for the first time. I will say something about Sebastian and Sebastian's dad, Shane.

Sebastian was the kid that was featured on CB's mornings. And he has a trach, he has a ventilator. Sebastian spent, I think, nine or ten months in the neonatal ICu, in the NICU. And basically what happens when you spend that much time with the NICU as a baby, he was born at 26 weeks, you become underdeveloped and so your lungs don't have the strength to breathe on their own. So that's why he uses a ventilator.

And his legs are underdeveloped, so that's why he can't quite walk yet. Now, Sebastian doesn't have a condition that will prevent him from walking in the future. So he's expected to eventually grow and age out of his ventilator and eventually age out of the chair and be able to walk independently. That's a process, right. It's going to take a number of years, but he really is blessed by having two wonderful parents.

And one thing I'll never forget is going to the clinic and bringing them Sebastian's chair and then putting Sebastian in it. And they put his. We have a shelf that people can use for a child's medical equipment if they want. It's up to them. And then they put it on there and strapped it in.

And his dad just started pushing him around the room. And there's just such joy on his dad's face because it's the first time he's like, pushed his son around. That's independently. He's holding his ventilator or it's in a stroller, and the kids lean back, looking up at the sky. Sebastian is now upright, facing forward, feet on the ground in the correct position, alert.

And his dad is just, like, taking them and spinning them and stuff. And seeing Sebastian's dad's joy, really is. That's one of the. That fills my cup for sure, is that this is a guy who's never been able to play with his son like this before, never been able to move him around the house easily like this. And now can just push him around and have a great time and laughing and stuff.

That is really what it's all about for us. Families with kids with complicated medical conditions, they have so much to deal with already. And then layer on top of that, they can't get the assistive technology they need. That, to me, is untenable and unexcusable. When you provide that assistive tech, you can see in their eyes they see their future as a little bit easier, a little bit more manageable, that they have some support to help them.

And that really is what stays with me throughout. When I like the images that stay with me are seen, the joy of the parents be able to, like, easily interact with their kids and move them around. We just did a chair delivery the other day, very similar kid to Sebastian, the same sort of medical needs. And once again, you put the kid in the chair. I don't know what it is about dads, but they just, like, love to spin their kids around in these chairs.

And, like, the dad took his kid, her nickname is Bacon, which is also fantastic. And was just spinning this spinning bacon in a bunch of circles. I got her really dizzy, and that was the first time he'd been able to really do that, and he really enjoyed that. And those are the things that stay with me and keep us going. And that's the videos I showed to the students.

And I said, this is your hard work. We helped them do this process, but the students are the ones who put together the chairs. They sewed the cushions. They chose the fabric. We help them.

We advise them. We bring them parts. We should fix stuff. But this is really their project, and I want them to have ownership of it. And when I show them those videos, you can see it has a really big effect on the students.

It brings home to them that this is a big deal, what they're doing, that this isn't just some theoretical school project. This has real world implications for people in their community, and it really inspires them to do more. And it's like a big confidence boost to them. This is proof that they can do something that really helps other people. And I think a lot of people just want that out of their life, right?

They want, they need that sort of contributions to feel like a whole person. And we also try to get the students and the families together as much as we can, too, when it's possible, so they can see it firsthand as well. And we've done that a couple times. So those are the really the moments that stick out to me. Seeing parents interact with their kids in these chairs for the first time is, will never get old to me.

And it's really the start of the journey for these little chairs, too. And I wanted to end on this question. You've shared a ton of great examples today, from the one you just talked about, to adaptive toilet seats, to other things that you've built, to the different toys that you're making interfaces to. What are your personal aspirations for the future and how you think organizations like makers making change and the use of adaptive technologies can enhance the lives of others. And where do you see this going?

That's a great question. I think the first thing that we need as a society is a more discussion and more understanding that if you're able bodied, which is a term that I think is slowly falling out of fashion, the real term is you're temporarily non disabled, like we will all be disabled at some point, given enough time, whether it's through injury, whether it's through age. One of the organizations I work with very closely, I want to call out locally is split second fitness and the split second foundation that's run by my good friend Mark Raymond in town here. And he had a spinal cord injury when he was in his twenties and realized there weren't a lot of support systems in place. So he started this gym and community center for people who are disabled.

But that's just a good reminder that your life can change in a split second and you can become disabled very quickly, and then you're left on your own. There's not so many support systems in our society, so that's the first thing I'd like to see change. It's just an acknowledgement that, like, it's part of life. And I think coming with that will be the downstream effects of people designing better buildings, of people designing better stuff, better equipment, better toys, all those things, so they're more accessible. For my organization in particular, we have a lot of aspirations.

We want to grow our organization. We want to bring on more designers. We want to bring on more staff. And eventually we'd like to have a dedicated facility where people can come and work on their adaptive projects with us together. So much of what we do is, I call it translation, our need knowers.

Exactly. They have the need and they know exactly what it is, and most of the time they know exactly how to solve it. They just don't know how to fabricate something or don't know how to draw something necessarily. And that's where we come in to help them see that into reality. One of our goals is to have a dedicated space where people can come and do that with us in a collaborative environment, where there are accessible tools for people to use on the computer, in a wood shop, in a maker shop.

And then also we would like to host residencies for people to come in and have a place for them to stay and work on their adaptations. And we can set people up with a kit of things they need to live their life. So that's one aspect. We want to grow that as well as just grow our collaborations, generally with different health systems. Getting integrated with health systems is a process.

It takes many years, once again, of trust building and working with them. Health systems are very risk averse, right? So they, for a new technology like this, this is something that they have to take their time with and understand. And I'd like to shout out Toro Hospital in New Orleans as being on the forefront of this, inviting us in to work directly with their patients, with their inpatients. That's what this spoon was made for.

That, I think, is really forward thinking. We'd like to expand our reach in the healthcare system generally, and help hospitals themselves do this work, help them understand how to do it, bring on their own staff to do this, their own 3d printers. So we'd like to not only expand what we're doing and making, we want to, like, expand the methodology out to these different healthcare systems so they can do this as well. Because frankly, what we're doing does not take extraordinary skills, it doesn't take extraordinary, even amounts of effort. Going back to, I'm a pretty average guy, not putting in crazy late nights to get this stuff done, and most people have the abilities to do it.

So we really want to expand people's minds on what's possible and help them do those tasks. And where appropriate, we'll do it with them. But we definitely see accessibility becoming more of a forefront in the public consciousness, in our buildings and in our devices and things like that. And we want to help organizations, hospitals, businesses, other design companies bring more accessibility into everything they're doing. Well, noam, this was such a fantastic interview.

Speaker A
If people want to learn more about you and the organization, where's the best place for them to go? So thank you. Makegood design is our website. Also on Instagram. Makegoodnola n o l a, like New Orleans, Louisiana.

Speaker C
That's what we say down here. That kind of is our running list of projects. We post a lot on Instagram. Makersmakingchange.com is makersmakingchange. And then Tom Global t o m global.org is another one of our partner organizations as well.

Speaker A
Man. Well, what a fantastic episode this was. Thank you so much for doing this. I know you and I have been trying to get together now for a while. Thank you, John.

Speaker C
I really appreciate it. Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Noam Platt, and I wanted to thank Noam for the honor and privilege of joining us here today and talking about assistive technologies links to all things. Noam will be in the show notes@passionstruck.com dot please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R.

Speaker A
Miles and our clips channel at Passionstruck clips. Please go check it out, subscribe and join. Over a quarter million other subscribers, advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place@passionstruck.com. deal please consider supporting those who support the show. If you want to catch daily doses of inspiration, then tune in on all the social platforms where I post daily bits of inspiration.

And if you want to catch me on LinkedIn, you can do so also at Johnr Miles. Lastly, you can sign up for our new passion struck challenge. This consists of just 20 questions. It takes you about ten minutes to complete, and you can do so by going to passionstruck.com and finding out where you sit on the passion struck continuum. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter live intentionally and sign up for our weekly challenge.

You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck podcast interview that I did with the brilliant Morley Robbins, who's an expert in mineral metabolism. In this episode, we explore Morley's incredible journey into the world of minerals, his groundbreaking insights onto the root causes of chronic health issues, the importance of copper in our diet, and the transformative power of understanding the body's mineral needs. From debunking common health myths to practical tips for optimizing your well being, this is a must listen episode. In the 1930s, it was very common to get between four and six milligrams of copper in a daily diet. That's a lot of copper.

E
By the 1960s, that number had dropped to two to five milligrams of copper. And by the current day, the RDA for today is nine tenths of 1 mg. But most people don't even get that. 60% of people don't even get nine tenths of 1 copper. And so we just have to be mindful that there's been this generational decline in the availability of copper, in large part.

Changes in the farming system, changes in the food system, changes in the pharmaceutical system have altered our access to this mineral. NIH has what's called an upper tolerable limit for copper at twelve milligrams. And yet we're supposed to believe the narrative, I'm anemic and I'm copper toxic, when in fact, the truth is just the opposite. The fee for this show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something useful or interesting. So definitely share this the work of Noam.

Speaker A
If you know someone who's interested in the work that he's doing for the disabled, the greatest compliment that you can give this show is to share it with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become passion struck.

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And he stole our crunch. Quick, the zip line. He's getting away. Throw our last crunch berry. No.

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Speaker D
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