Course ASSIST HEIDI – Designing and implementing Assistive Tools for people with disabilities
This course brings students and people with disabilities (HEIDI – Human being with disability) together, to design and prototype an individual assistive technology solution for them. Students will learn the basics about disability, existing assistive tools, rapid prototyping and microcontrollers. Students will have access to materials, tools and equipment (e.g. 3D printer etc.). The Smart Living Lab of the UAS Technikum Wien provides the perfect environment for the participants. This is the best opportunity to get to know people with disabilities, to contribute, develop and implement your own ideas.
In the project-based course with mixed teams of international (ERASMUS) students and UASTW students the following topics are covered (depending on the project chosen):
- Disabilities
- Assistive Tools
- Programming
- Microcontroller (Arduino)
- Rapid Prototyping
- Applications of ML
Please accept cookies for external media to view videos
The course methodology and contents will be similar to the ASSIST HEIDI Summer School 2022.
See also #assistheidi (linkedin).
Facts
- Internationalization opportunity for part-time students
- Recognizable for the compulsory UASTW Internalization module!
- Co-Design of Assistive Solutions involving people with disabilities
- English, 6 ECTS
- Lecturers Martin Deinhofer, Alija Sabic and Sarah Langer
- The course will be offered at least until SS2026
Prerequisites
- Study semester 4 or higher (application before already)
- Either programming or embedded development skills recommended
- See Application form
Course details
The attendance time of the course is coordinated with other study programs of UAS Technikum Wien, in order to enable participation also for part-time students.
The course starts usually in the second week of the semester (calender week 9 or 38) and is held on Wednesday from 15:15-17:40 on campus (weekly in the first half of the course and bi-weekly in the second half of the course).
Assessment Method
- 1 x Assignment (graded as group work) = 20%
- 1 x Project work (graded as group work) = 80%
Application
See Application form at the bottom of the page!
Awards
Profformance Teacher Power Award: 1st price in the category Inclusion & Diversity
Funding
The course is operated by the project Inclusion International funded by the City of Vienna (call nr. 33-02).
Previous courses
The course ASSIST HEIDI was held 3 times (SS2023, WS2023, SS2024) with UAS TW students and international students. Subsequently, you will find a selection of topics and their results.
SS2023
In the course of SS2023 14 students (9 UAS TW, 5 international) participated the course in which Susanne Buchner-Sabathy and Oliver Klein contributed as HEIDIs (co-designer). In 4 mixed international teams, the students worked on
Marco-POIO (gadget to assist blind persons navigating back to a Point-of-Interest left behind by using haptic feedback in form of vibrations), die-melodie (Recognizing and converting music sheets to ABC music notation in order to make the notes readable by screen readers), FAVI (adding voice commands to the Flexible Assistive Button Interface FABI), Tactile Pictures (Converting selected pictures to 3D prints with elevations of important objects).
Figure 1: Evaluation of 3D printed pictures (left), screenshot of die melodie (middle) and prototype design of Marco POIO navigation device (right).
WS2023
In the course of WS2023 13 students (7 UAS TW, 6 international) participated the course in which Natascha Toman and Erich Schmid contributed as HEIDIs (co-designer). In 2 mixed international teams, the students worked on the projects OBR scanner (Evaluation and optimization of a scanning setup for blind people in order to digitize analogue braille books) and Speech Jokey (Development of a program for editing and synthesizing text with computer generated speech for people with speech impairment).
Figure 2: Scanning of braille books (left) and presentation of Speech Jokey (right).
SS2024
In the course of SS2024 23 students (12 UAS TW, 11 international) participated the course in which Natascha Toman and Erich Schmid contributed as HEIDIs (co-designer). In 4 mixed international teams, the students worked on the projects wheely joystick mouse (Adaption of the wheelchair joystick to make it usable as a computer mouse), nfc reader for physical interaction (nfc reader to allow physical interaction with AAC software using nfc-tagged objects), OBR scanner v2 (Continued evaluation and optimization of a scanning setup for blind people in order to digitize analogue braille books) and Speech Jokey v2 (Continued development of a program for editing and synthesizing text with computer generated speech for people with speech impairment).
Figure 3: nfc reader for physical interaction (top left), obr scanner (top right), Speech Jokey (middle left) and wheely joystick mouse (middle right, bottom).
ASSIST HEIDI Application
Application Deadline 29.06.2025!!!
The applicants will be selected by the following criteria:
- Prerequisites: 4 semester (Technical Bachelor program), 2 semester (Bachelor Biomedical Engineering)
- Motivation letter
- Date of application: First come, first serve
Do you have questions? Please send us an e-Mail to studyathome@tecnikum-wien.at!