Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Designing Toys for Children with Visual Impairment

Joint Submission by:
Christa Wheeler
Sirin Yaemsiri

Mentor:
Dr. Richard Goldberg, Professor of Biomedical Engineering

A significant barrier in preventing children with visual impairment from learning how to use a cane is the
complexity involved in exploring their environment. We are interested in designing toys for these children to
encourage them to explore their surroundings. Currently, we are designing an electronic game geared
towards toddlers that will fit within a playpen for our final project in Dr. Gary Bishop’s Enabling Technology
class, COMP190. However, we are discovering that there is such a myriad of possibilities for continued
research in the field of assistive technology (AT). We would like to continue our research in AT under the
mentorship of Dr. Richard Goldberg this summer.

We were drawn towards this exciting field last year after hearing Dr. Goldberg’s lecture about AT to our
Introduction to Biomedical Engineering class. During the lecture, he introduced us to how AT can enrich the
lives of people with disabilities. For example, students under Dr. Goldberg modified a Barbie car for a child
with cerebral palsy. In another project, students modified a tricycle for use by a child born with a condition
that caused his hands to be directly attached to his shoulders. Learning about how UNC students touched
the lives of these children inspired us to enroll in Dr. Gary Bishop’s Enabling Technology class this spring.
For the final project of the Enabling Technology class, each student will design some sort of technology that
can better the lives of people with disabilities. As biomedical engineering majors we can apply the knowledge
we learned in our classes to design this technology. This in itself is exhilarating.

Throughout the term, Dr. Bishop invited a plethora of speakers to discuss different research areas within AT.
One of the speakers was an Orientation and Mobility Specialist who taught us how to use a cane blindfolded.
She mentioned that it was difficult for young children to learn how to use a cane. The reason for this is that
babies who are visually impaired have very little incentive to learn how to crawl. While large colorful toys
perk the interest of babies who can see, babies who are visually impaired require a different type of stimulus.

Currently, we are designing an electronic toy that will fit inside a playpen. Our project consists of four sound
cubes in each of the four corners of the playpen. When you turn the toy on, one of the cubes will start to
play a song. This will encourage a toddler to move towards that cube. When the toddler touches the top of
the cube, the sound will turn off and a sound cube in another corner will start playing, encouraging the toddler
to move in another direction. We hope that this game will encourage toddlers to explore their environment
and help them to develop physical coordination. We are working with Dr. Goldberg on designing this project
 For this semester, he is providing us with grant money to fund the project and he is mentoring our circuit
design process.

When we wrote our initial project proposal it included many more toys designed to educate children with
visual impairments. However, we realized that we could only fully develop one project within the space of a
semester. For our summer research project, we wish to further explore these toys that can potentially aid
young children with visual impairments. Other toy designs included: 
-	Braille mat: The mat would hang over the edge of the playpen. As the toddler runs his fingers over
each Braille letter, for example 'A,' the mat would say 'A is for Apple.' This toy would be used to help
children learn to read Braille the same way a sighted child would be given large alphabet books.
-	Large clock: The toddler could move the arms of the clock. As he moved the arms, it would trigger
the clock to read the time aloud. The clock is one of the most important orientation tools used by people
with visual impairment. For example one would not say "the post office is over there to a blind person;"
instead one would say "The post office is at 3 o’clock."
-	Sound mat: This sound mat is geared towards 6 - 10 month old babies who are just beginning to roll
over and crawl. The mat could line the floor of the playpen. Different sounds will be triggered as the baby
moves over different areas. This toy is a sort of pregame to the sound cubes we described earlier. Babies
are stimulated by the sound and are encouraged to learn to roll over and push up using their arms.
Although there is a world of toys for sighted children to use to learn, grow and develop, toy designers often
forget that not all children learn in the same way. There should therefore be comparable toys designed for
children who learn best through audible and tactile stimulation.

At present, we are funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation and we will be writing an article
for their yearly publication, “Engineering Design Projects to Aid Persons with Disabilities.” We are also
planning on submitting our project this December to a student design competition sponsored by RESNA,
the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America, and hopefully present
our work at their conference the following summer in 2004. We are collaborating with Diane Bauner, an
Orientation and Mobility Specialist, and the Governor Morehead Preschool for the Blind in Raleigh to
provide guidance and evaluate our finished product. They will provide us with feedback and aid us in
developing a project that meets the needs of their clients. We intend to donate our project to them when it is
complete.

The successes in our preliminary work in this field have encouraged us to further explore its possibilities. Our
joint interest in assistive technology, our combined engineering skills, and our mutual synergy makes our
collaboration extremely productive. Receiving this grant would make this project an exciting reality.