Disability × Digital Innovation

Creating individually customized self-help tools useful for the lives of people with disabilities and the elderly, using 3D printers and other digital fabrication methods and made open source. What is the future beyond the movement?

-Sonoko Hayashi (Occupational Therapist, Director of FabLab Shinagawa)

People with disabilities and the elderly can do more by using individually customized tools. In Japan, such tools are called "self-help tools" and have traditionally been handmade. By applying digital fabrication technology such as 3D printers, smooth customization is possible and improves design. Since 2018, I have been researching communities that fabricate self-help tools with 3D printers, the construction of a 3D model sharing platform for self-help tools, and an "inclusive makeathon," an event where disabled and elderly people also make tools together. This makeathon is an activity that I started in Japan about three years ago after being greatly impressed by the activities of TOM (Tikkun Olam Makers), a non-profit organization in Israel. Working with members in Israel, we continue to hold the event on a regular basis and share the event results on the TOM Global website.

The majority of the data for the self-help tools we have produced so far is open source so that we can take full advantage of digital technology. By doing so, we are able to deliver necessary tools to those who need them, even if they are limited. In the course of our research, we are beginning to identify three values that this activity will bring to the future. They are: Acceptance, Unity, and Advancement.

Three Values that Digital Bring

Tools individually optimized for our ever-changing lives may not be perfect. However, by accepting them and using them with ingenuity, we will be able to do what we could not do before, and our lives will be enriched. Through the customization of tools, the people around us can accept each other's connection to the future of tools, share the joy of being able to do so, and keep moving forward without giving up.
Digital innovation has already begun to reconnect modern society, which has long been tied down by "productivity" and tired of the excessive division of labor, to a more organic way of life.

Sonoko Hayashi

Occupational Therapist, Director of FabLab Shinagawa, President of ICT Rehabilitation Research Association, engaged in research on building a community and platform to fabricate self-help tools using 3D printers since 2018. She regularly organizes "inclusive makeathon," events where teams of people with disabilities work together to create self-help tools.

She is the editor and author of "Easy for the First Time! Let's Make Self-help Devices with a 3D Printer" (2019), published by Miwa-Shoten Ltd.
From January 16 to February 27, 2021, she organized the online event "2020 TOM MAKEASON TOKYO," sponsored by the Embassy of Israel in Japan, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, and other organizations.