2. Mia Hoffman: on early childhood mobility, young kids as participants, and accessibility of research for people with disabilities

Mia Hoffman is a third-year PhD student (personal page, Twitter) at the University of Washington’s Steele Lab. Her main research motto is “Let kids be kids”, and all of her work is a true reflection of it. In just two years at UW, she has engaged in multiple projects that we discussed in this episode that focus on early childhood mobility (ride-on cars and harness systems) and the development of simple switch access toolkits to improve accessibility of toys for kids of all abilities. We also discussed the importance of qualitative research in the field of assistive tech and touched on how accessibility of research environments for people with disabilities. Mia shared a great deal of useful resources with us that are available below. LIST OF RESOURCES: PUMA (The Portable Mobility Aid for Children) by Enliten LLC HuskyADAPT (Accessible Design And Play Technology) at the University of Washington Go Baby Go Powered Mobility Program Frog Mobility Device Wizzybug Bugzi Mobility Device This episode is powered by: ⁠CREATE ⁠(the Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences) at the University of Washington ⁠RESNA ⁠(the Rehabilitation Engineering and assistive technology Society of North America) ⁠NIDILRR ⁠ARRT Training grant 90ARCP0005-01-00 Transcript of this episode can be found ⁠here⁠.