Inclusion in educational spaces is vital, and many institutions lack the necessary accommodations for students with disabilities who have a right to learn. Students at Universidad Tecnologica de Panama have taken note of the gap in engineering education, and with APEDIPROLOCHI (Asociación de Personas con Discapacidad y Problemas de Locomoción de Chiriquí, or the Association for People with Disabilities and Mobility Difficulties) to create a project that supplies an educational environment for students with visual impairments and physical disabilities to encourages autonomy and individual development in a comprehensive and inclusive manner.
These goals will be carried out in an after-school program for high school students, where they will learn how to design, manufacture, and assemble electronic and mechanical devices, as well as learn to program and adjust mobile applications that facilitate engineering education for people with disabilities. This includes designing a wheelchair, workshops in 3D design, programming machinal design, and more.
Twenty-four students will be attending the program facilitated by fifteen university students.
As part of the Access and Abilities Competition, EPICS at IEEE provided a grant of $8,100.