NEW ORLEANS — A few weeks ago, Noam Platt and Philip Dunham set up shop at Camp Dream Street, an overnight camp in Mississippi for children with disabilities.

When one camper who uses a wheelchair said he had trouble drawing with a clipboard when he wasn’t near a table, Platt and Dunham worked with him to tailor a design that would fit his needs. Overnight they 3D-printed a contoured lap desk fitted to his legs, customized with his name and a Godzilla head sticking out.

For a camper whose feeding tube kept slipping off the back of her wheelchair, they made a small clip to hold it in place. For another, who is vision impaired, they crafted a clip to attach a flashlight to her walking cane.

In the grand scheme of technological advancement, the items weren’t heavy lifts: The pieces took less than a day to design and print and cost a few dollars at most. But for the campers, they made all the difference.

Platt, with his New Orleans-based nonprofit, MakeGood, creates customized assistive technology to help people with disabilities solve problems they encounter in daily life.

The nonprofit garnered national attention last year with their toddler mobility trainers — tiny wheelchairs made of wood and plastic that help small children move around — but their range of products is constantly growing, aided by open-source design, 3D printing and the input and creativity of those in the disability community. Some past designs include a plastic piece to hold a wheelchair buckle when it’s not in use and a handle for a toothbrush or other utensils to aid with grip.

“A big reason people reach out to us is they can’t find what they need available on the commercial market and we’re able to make things very inexpensively that are really suited to their specific need,” Platt said. “We’ve found through our work that most people come to us knowing pretty much exactly what they need, they just need help seeing it to reality.”

Open-source design

An architect by trade, Platt founded MakeGood in 2021 after he experimented with creating a portable toilet seat for a friend’s son with cerebral palsy who needed something supportive with straps that could be easily taken out of the house. That project is still ongoing, Platt said, but over the past two years MakeGood has sent more than 500 assistive devices of all kinds to people across the country, free of charge.

Platt also helps companies and homeowners design space to make it more accessible.

The work is largely made possible through open-source design available on websites including Israeli nonprofit Tikkun Olam Makers, meaning people around the world share their designs and dimensions for others to replicate their products.

Last year, CBS News highlighted MakeGood’s toddler mobility chairs and their partnership with Tulane University’s service learning program. Tulane students helped modify the design and created chairs that cost about $200 for materials, mostly wood and 3D-printed plastic, far less than the $1,000 to $10,000 price tag on other commercially produced chairs even with insurance.

MakeGood sent their designs to Muhammed Hussain Shah, a designer in Pakistan, who customized them to be better suited for off-road conditions of their roads for children in his community.

“When it’s really good, something like the wheelchair, it’s really powerful and you can share it all over the world and people can recreate it with the materials they have at hand,” Platt said.

Customized problem solving

People sometimes see MakeGood’s social media posts and ask for a specific product that they’ve already made. Others reach out with an idea for a new invention they want to collaborate on, Platt said. MakeGood also collaborates with charities or nonprofits, including hospitals. They recently donated several 3D printers to New Orleans hospitals so clinicians can make the tools themselves.

Dunham, who has been a quadriplegic since 1999, said 3D printing has made it possible to create such specific products. Duhnam initially worked with Platt to design a phone mount for himself and has since come on board as a designer.

“We can rapidly prototype things that sometimes can be super niche and may only be suitable for one person at a time but we may be able to reuse the design or tailor it or adjust it to make it suitable for someone else,” Dunham said.

Versions of some items, like the chairs, are available on the mainstream market. But MakeGood customizes the designs for clients. For example, they could add weight to a utensil handle to aid someone with tremors. Other items solve problems too specific for a product to be in existence.

“It’s not a complicated thing, it’s something that was really simple but there’s nothing you could necessarily find to fix that problem,” Dunham said, explaining the clip used to attach the feeding bag to the camper’s wheelchair. “It’s that sort of problem that people with disabilities often encounter — you have something that doesn’t quite work as you’re expecting it and you need to figure out some workaround.”

© 2024 The Advocate
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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