Ethan was warned by his neurologist to stop playing football, because further injuries might affect his brain.

"In my junior year, I got my fourth concussion. I was told by my neurologist that if I continued to play, I may not graduate high school, let alone college", he explained.

After almost a year doing research, the student tried to find a way to prevent this. He and two classmates developed alight-weight helmet, made of carbon and fiber material, that can reduce the impact injuries by almost 75%.

After a car accident, in 1983, Li had to have her legs amputated. Since then, Li started practicing walking with the help of two wooden benches. She mastered the technique by the age of eight.

“Compared with most others, I've come against more difficulties," Li explained. "But, I always whisper to myself that 'God helps those who help themselves' in order to inspire me to keep moving forward".

Ryan, who has a background in mechanical engineering, wanted to create a swing that could hold Mary and her 450 pound wheelchair.

Peter decided to create this device because he was starting to finding it hard to push his traditional wheelchair around on rough ground, and he wanted to be able to go with his father to beach and to the countryside.

Jon had the idea for this invention while rowing at Diver Lake Park, in Nainaimo, British Columbia, after seeing men in wheelchairs casting lines from the accessible fishing dock.

“Too bad they couldn’t be out bobbing in a canoe or rowing their way around the calm waters”, Jon thought. And that’s when he thought he could make this happen.

“I gasp and look to the sky in amazement. I know it will work even before testing my theory”, the inventor shared.

“A lot of people ask me how I thought of this app idea. It all started when I was watching a man in a wheelchair attempt to open a very heavy door at a sporting goods store. The door didn't have an automatic push button to open the door. As the man struggled to get through the door, I wondered if there was an app that could have told him, before he left his house, about the features available at this and other sporting goods stores around the area. After doing some research, I wasn't able to find any such app.

The myoelectric hand, known has Handiii, transmits EMG sensor information from the arm to a smartphone using a wireless communication link embedded under the prosthesis. The smartphone algorithms interprets these signals to control the arm. The invention allows the wearer to toggle through a range of programmable grips such as a pinch grip, five fingered grasps etc. via a small button on the elbow.

Sydney got inspired by this man, as she also had to create an assistive device as a final class project.

That’s how she got to develop Go-Row — a one-armed, standup paddle attached to a harness system that enables rowing.

Despite his amputation, the veteran could fish, bowl and ride horses, but when his young son asked to go standup paddle boarding, he encountered a problem: He couldn’t paddle with one arm.

According to the student, the device is designed for people hampered by a limb disability, such as an amputation, bone deformity or weakness caused by a stroke.

Sarah, a family friend, who does the set design for their theatre group, turned Maddie’s back brace into a steampunk armor.

"My daughter didn't like the brace she had to wear after surgery, so a friend helped her steampunk it. Best part, now folks are intrigued, and come up and ask why she has to wear it rather than just staring”, Lisa C., Maddie’s mother, explained.

Tom was always thinking about solutions to help his overcome his problems. He co founded NotBroken, a platform with advice and stories for people who live with disabilities.

“I remember being in the hospital thinking of ways to make a mechanical system to assist my riding”, he explained.

"Actually, I wanted to make a wheelchair that flies and go under water," he said. "But my teacher said we need to start small and then go big."

The group used Autodesk Fusion 360 to work on the design, with the end goal of having open source designs that anybody can 3D print and use on their own wheelchairs.

Hector lost both arms in 1992, due to a work accident.

"I lost my arms, but I didn't lose that sense of responsibility that I have to be there for them," he recalls. "And that kept me going. I am Hector Picard. I am a man first, I'm a father, I'm a husband. I have to be that. I'm not going to sit back and wait for life to pass by. I'm going to grab it and live it to the fullest and I'm going to help people along the way."

“In December 2014, I had one of the worst panic attacks of my life. It was the first time ever that I went completely nonverbal, and it was really scary. Back home, I thought about ways I could’ve dealt with the situation better, and two-way communication via text came to mind. I started searching the Play Store for chat apps, but none that I could find allowed for two persons to type on the same device. Since I’m a Software Engineering student, I decided to create my own at that point”, he explained.

It all started at a hackathon, during this students’ freshman year, when they created a Google Glass app that recognized objects in front of it.

When they realized they could help the visually impaired, they started working on an app for iOS and Android.

Tom was hired by Comscat to work on the support team developing products and services for people with disabilities. It took the team about 18 months to develop the "talking guide."

“Announces menu items, announces the TV listings, the on demand title of menus we have for both TV and movies. It allows someone whose blind or visually impaired to schedule and play back a DVR recording,” said Wlodkowski. The system also has a Spanish version.

“For the first time, the visually impaired can independently navigate the set top box interface,” Wlodkowski explained.

When Robert was a child he went through a lot of painful operations to get him with only partial use of his left arm and hand.

In 2012, Nicolas was told about the potential for 3D printing and open source tools that include expansive online communities of those looking to help other users. So the inventor got convinced that he could develop his own robotic hand design not just for himself, but others in need of a prosthesis both in France and internationally, too.

“While walking through Rennes, I passed an exhibition [at the LabFab fab lab] where strange machines, like something from science fiction, were depositing layers of material onto platforms. They were 3D printers,” said Huchet.

Juliete’s mother taught her how to crochet at age eight. And the young girl wanted to have a toy that was like her, that had arthritis.

“After her diagnosis, she was really down. We went up north shortly after and she asked me if she could have a doll that had arthritis,” her mom Calesta says. “I went online and Googled everything I could think of but found nothing. There were toys with other conditions but none with arthritis”.

So Juliette started making her own toys, and she also wanted to make something that would help other kids suffering from this disease.

“It was harvest season and my father decided to take along three year old Cornelius. We were going to help a few of my uncles gather the season’s yield of cotton. [I Was] standing on the outside deck of the cotton picker, when my uncle proceeded to drive over a stump hidden amongst the crop. The machine tipped over and landed on top of me," Cornelius said.

“The defining moment was when I was sitting on a toilet seat trying to figure out what I could possibly use to support some portion of my weight and lessen the severe weight bearing pain in my knees after a day of snowboarding 30,000 vertical feet on double black diamond moguls. You see, I have spent a lifetime enjoying extreme sports and I have the knee surgery scars to prove it. When I lowered to the toilet seat that day it was painful, but from experience I knew that raising was always more painful. In the end, the only thing I could find for support was the front of the toilet seat.