Invention To Help Disabled

An invention to help disabled people open food packaging receives a £10,000 funding boost.

 

Millions of disabled people who struggle to open food packaging such as bags of rice and pasta could receive help from a new invention which is to be given development funding after it won a competition to help disabled people to live more independently.

Design for Life is a competition organised by Irwin Mitchell in association with Disability Rights UK, a charity working to create a society where everyone can participate equally as full citizens. The initiative is also supported by Nesta, the innovation charity that helps people and organisations bring great ideas to life.

The competition received over 100 entries from people with ideas and solutions to support disabled people to live more independently and to improve their quality of life. Several key themes emerged throughout the entries including:

·         Gripping tools for people facing dexterity challenges

·         Organisation ideas for disabled people such as those diagnosed with autism

·         Devices to enable wheelchair users to venture off the usual path, e.g. on the beach or fields

·         And support for everyday tasks for blind people.

The winning entry, chosen by a panel of judges with extensive experience of working with product design with and for disabled people, was a device to help those with hand or co-ordination disabilities to open tricky packaging with just a swipe of their hand. It was chosen as the winner because of its scalability and because it could potentially help a number of different disabled communities, with an estimated 2.3 million people over 50 in the UK alone having a form of hand disability.

Irwin Mitchell will now work with the winner to provide funding up to the value of £10,000 to contribute to the development of a prototype of the winning device.

Product developer Simon Lyons, 25, from Loughborough, who submitted the winning design, said:  
"I was involved in a project where disabled people posted videos of everyday problems they faced and the most complained about issue was difficulties opening packages so I set myself the task of solving the problem.”