B and his mother, Joyce Lee, M.D., who is a University of Michigan associate professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases, have to ensure that his teachers, babysitters, and other caregivers know how to manage an allergic reaction and administer an EpiPen injection at all times. Up until a few years ago, they’d been relying on the standard Food Allergy Action Plan provided by their pediatrician to pass on the instructions, a document that according to Joyce is “a design fail”.

Jeff, who is a designer, searched for alternatives but couldn’t find any. So he took action, and started designing patient-friendly crutches.

“Despite severe symptoms initially, these settled down and my condition was barely noticeable to most people until after the birth of my son in 2003. Finding it increasingly difficult to walk unaided, I resorted to using crutches. But they were so drab and grey! If I had to use them, I at least wanted them to be pink! It sounded so simple but even on the internet, pink crutches were hard to find”, Kate explained.

Juan and his sister Andrea Monroy launched a brand new online marketplace for 3D design and 3D printing called 3Dglück, which aims to provide 3D creation services to people across Latin America. Diego, a rock n roll lover, was born with a congenital amputation of his right hand.

The boy used other prosthesis as a child, but they never worked very well for him. They tended to break, be uncomfortable or featured a mechanical grip that was hardly worth all the trouble, and by the age of eight he decided that he didn’t want to have a replacement for his hand anymore.

When his brother couldn’t get cooperation from the manufacturer of his tennis wheelchair regarding adjustments, they decided to do it themselves.

In 1992 after being in the aerospace industry, Mike left his job and they formed their own wheelchair company.

All the wheelchairs are custom made, built and adapted according to the users’ needs and request.

The idea of utilising gyroscopic vehicles for their own needs was born in 2010. Marit Sundin felt that the seats available on the market were not really complete – they lacked functions that she would have preferred in terms of safety and comfort. She wanted to improve her mobility by finding a complement to her wheelchair.

After enrolling in college, Alan started thinking about ways to improve his life, and how he could open his business. At first, he created a prototype for a wheelchair.

“I had three objectives in mind: (1) I wanted a chair that was lightweight and rigid (2) I wanted a chair you could make narrower while in it, i.e. small bathroom doors (3) I wanted a chair that would fold as small as a briefcase with the wheels off”, the inventor observed.

The twins are now 3D printing experts, as they are constantly designing and 3D printing all sorts of little components and parts to make their own lives easier.

“When I was little, my dad taught me how to make model aircraft out of balsa wood and glue, and my disability took that away from me, but now technology has given that ability back. I can design things on the computer and print them out on my 3D printer and it's fantastic”, Nick explained.

Until the accident, Pau had a very active life and has an Industrial design student. He got frustrated, when, after the accident, he realized that the market didn’t offer technical and orthopaedic aids that would fulfil his expectations, either in terms of mobility or in terms of lifestyle.

That’s when he started creating his own mobility solutions: add-on handbikes that could be connected to his wheelchair and which incorporated technology from cycling and electric vehicles.

Jacob became an inspiration for Laurie. While she was spending time with him at the hospital, she realized that everything on his wheelchair was too black and boring. And so, Laurie was committed to change this.

He had the idea for this device when he noticed his grandmother had trouble grasping the remote control.

She lacked in hand strength, grip and manual dexterity. So Charalampos wanted to find a way to help her, and also other people suffering from the same or similar problems.

“It has a wooden base and sits flat on a table with four real violin strings elevated off the base. It exercises specific joints affected by arthritis,” Betts explanation of her invention, named for the violin practice and exercise.

Sarah’s condition results in painfully swollen hands, ankles and toes. The teen had the idea for the device because she plays the violin.

Sindy developed this invention after her father asked her to come up with a way to get his disabled neighbor into the car.

“My dad was being called next door to help, so he asked me to up to came up with an idea to help get his neighbor into the car”, the inventor explained.

The harness, available in several sizes, was first created in 1995, and has been available online for sale since 2009, being less expensive that other systems for this purpose on the market.

Sindy has several videos online that provide training for caregivers that want to use this invention.

Jacques was confined to a power wheelchair and could only control his left thumb. Being an inventor, and because he wanted to have some more independency, he built a robotic arm which allowed him to perform simple tasks previously rendered impossible by his physical state.

The inventor died in 1999, but his nephew Charles Deguire continued his uncle’s work. In 2006, he and a friend founded Kinova Robotics, a company that produces advanced assistive robotic devices.

Initially paralyzed from the neck down, Brian was confined to and dependent upon wheelchairs. One day in rehab, Brian sat staring at a water fountain, unable to propel his chair forward to get a drink. Becoming increasingly frustrated about his inability to move his wheelchair, he had an epiphany that adding a lever to a wheelchair could solve his and other disabled peoples mobility challenges.

“To be able to drive a wheelchair was impossible for me,” says Watwood. “I couldn’t feel it with my arms and hands.”

And this is how he got the idea for Wijit.

Joel was diagnosed with cancer when he was twelve months old.

Ryan is a game developer and Amy is a writer, and they launched That Dragon , Cancer in January 2016.

Green’s idea to make a videogame about Joel came to him in church, as he reflected on a harrowing evening a couple of years earlier when Joel was dehydrated and diarrheal, unable to drink anything without vomiting it back up, feverish, howling, and inconsolable, no matter how Green tried to soothe him.

“For nearly 36 years since my injury, traveling anywhere for more than a couple days posed some serious problems. On short trips I could stuff my non-portable shower chair into my van. Although I could usually get my chair over a toilet, rarely did I have access to a roll-in shower. I grew wary of the embarrassment from having a porter push my potty chair through parking lots and hotel lobbies”, Rick explained.

Rick then had an idea.

“I love fine food and fine dining. After the accident, I had to rely on someone to feed me because none of the assisted living products available enabled me to eat independently. Mealtime was not a dining experience; it was simply a feeding task. I desperately wanted to be able to dine again, independently, and with dignity… Even in public. It is simple things like this that seem to help each of us feel better about ourselves”, Bob explained.

Here are the Dining with dignity features:

'The way the board is designed, it's instant Independence”, Watt explained Today.

Since he has the Onit Ability Board, Webb has gone on to compete in surfing and paddleboarding competitions, which he wasn’t able to do in 30 years.

‘I racked my brain for a while trying to come up with an object that was interesting and maybe held potential to be turned into something more,’ the student said. ‘Then later, at track practice, my coach suggested trying to scan one of the handmade gloves we use to race.’