An Overview of the National Science Foundation Program on Senior Design Projects to aid Persons with Disabilities

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Senior Design Projects to Aid Persons with Disabilities program. In 1988, the NSF started to provide a mechanism whereby student engineers at universities throughout the United States designed and constructed devices for persons with disabilities. This program combined the academic requirement of a design experience with enhanced educational opportunities for students, and improved the quality of life for disabled individuals. Students and university faculty provided, through their normal ABET accredited senior design class, engineering time to design and build the device or software, and the NSF provided funds, competitively awarded to universities, for supplies, equipment and fabrication costs for the design projects. Described in this paper are some experiences at several universities in this program and an annual publication that describes all of the projects carried out in this initiative.