Device helps physically disabled turn on computer

“For months, we looked for a device for someone who lacks fine motor skills for months but couldn’t find anything,” says Dr. Joseph Drew, Kent State associate professor of political science.

Thus, Drew, his graduate assistant Ron Franklin, who has quadriplegia, and Kenneth McElravy, a manufacturing lab technician at Kent State Trumbull, found a solution on their own by adding a jack to the back interior wall of the central processing unit and paralleling it to the on/off circuit of the motherboard. Any existing technologies, such as sensitive or sip/puff switches mentioned above, can be plugged in to the added jack allowing users with physical disabilities to turn on the computer by themselves.

“The idea is to make those with disabilities as independent as possible,” says Drew, who also has designed a unique online Master of Public Administration degree program, the only one in the nation to meet and exceed the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Source: Kent State University