IMPACT Collaboratory

Igniting Mobility, Play, and Access for Children with Technology

Collaborations

Alyssa Fiss, Julia Looper and Reham Abuatiq at the Combined Sections Meeting of the American Physical Therapy Association in Boston Massachusetts in February 2024. They are standing in front of their PowerPoint presentation titled Dynamic supported play environments to encourage mobility and exploration in Toddlers with Down Syndrome.

Heather Feldner, Alyssa Fiss, and Julia Looper are collaborating on the project “Up and Down: Use of a Dynamic Partial Body Weight Support Play Environment to Encourage Upright Mobility and Exploration in Infants with Down Syndrome,” funded by APTA Pediatrics Research Grants. This study, conducted in Texas and Washington State, aims to explore the effects of a harness-based intervention on exploratory behavior, gross motor skill acquisition, and parent-reported mastery motivation among infants with Down syndrome. By integrating a dynamic partial body weight support system within a play environment, the researchers hope to enhance mobility and developmental outcomes for these infants.

A purple banner logo for Husky ADAPT with three small octagonal images showing a soldering iron, a human body, and a toy car

We are so excited to be a part of Husky ADAPT: Accessible Design and Play Technology, a UW Registered Student Organization dedicated to making play accessible and inclusive through K-12 outreach, toy adaptation, and other technology design projects.

Sam Logan, Assistant Professor at Oregon State University, kneeling down next to a small child driving a ride-on car, they are both smiling.

The first ever Go Baby Go Workshop- Sam led, Heather attended, and the rest is history! We are now in our 8th year of partnership in research and outreach with Dr. Sam Logan, Assistant Professor and Director of the Social Mobility Lab at Oregon State University.

A photo of Dr. Cole Galloway, professor at University of Delaware and founder of Go Baby Go

It all started with an unusual idea- complete a PhD degree in Disability Studies at UIC, but connect it with research with Dr. Cole Galloway, Professor and Founder of Go Baby Go at the University of Delaware. Somehow, it worked! Check out his TED Talk about the importance for mobility for all children!

A panel of four presenters on a stage, from left to right is Jacob Wobbrock, Kat Steele, Oscar Nunez, and Heather Feldner, who is speaking into the microphone

Great things happen when disciplines come together! It was an honor to be a postdoc in Dr. Kat Steele’s mechanical engineering lab at UW, and our partnership exploring user-centered design of rehabilitation and other accessible technologies continues! Here we are together with other accessibility researchers on a panel at the 2019 Microsoft IdeaGen Summit.

Two researchers, Kyle Winfree and Heather Feldner, are outside. Heather is smiling in the foreground and holding up a circuit board, and Kyle is smiling in the background, holding a laptop computer.

More interdisciplinary collaboration, this time in Arizona! Dr. Kyle Winfree, Assistant Professor and Director of the Wearable Informatics Lab at Northern Arizona University has been instrumental in the construction and deployment of our custom data loggers for our Go Baby Go research. Here we are testing our code and first prototype, sensor by sensor.