Fabricating Custom Assistive Interfaces

Description:

Every year, people who can’t use a standard keyboard or mouse are locked out of communication devices, toys, computers, and environmental controls impacting their independence. This is not because the technology doesn’t exist, but because switch interfaces are expensive, hard to source, or don’t fit the person’s specific movement. This course teaches you to fabricate your own.

Using the BBC micro:bit, a $20 microcontroller with no soldering required, you’ll learn the core engineering concept behind every assistive switch interface and how to design a custom human- computer interface. In this course you’ll use beginner friendly block based coding to fabricate:

• a two built-in button switch interface sending keyboard commands
• An external assistive switch using conductive materials for keyboard commands
• A light based mouse click
• A touch based media player
• A tilt/ motion activated mouse cursor

Throughout this course’s 9 modules, you’ll be building background knowledge of physical computing and coding that can be carried over to more complex microcontroller projects. But for this course, no electronics background needed! Just a micro:bit, a laptop, and curiosity.