The co-production revolution

By Rachael Wallach, SCIE trustee and Founder of #HackOnWheels

We’re at the vanguard of a disability revolution. This revolution is about co-producing and personalizing things not just services. I’m going to tell you about one of the first revolts; how a steampunk enthusiast and a carpenter from South Africa co-produced prosthetics. 

In 2011 Ivan, a steampunk enthusiast from the USA, made a functional mechanical costume hand. Richard, a carpenter from South Africa who had lost two fingers in a woodworking accident, saw a video of the hand on the internet. He reached out to Ivan and they adapted the design into a functional prosthetic hand for Richard. They posted a video of their design on the internet, which the mother of a boy who was born without any fingers saw. She asked whether they could make a prosthetic hand for her son. They agreed but quickly realized that the boy would grow out of the hand very soon. So they looked for ways to adapt the design so it could be made more easily. 

The solution they hit on was 3D printing. Instead of copyrighting their 3D printable design they shared it “openly" online so that anyone could freely use, adapt and make it. The design attracted hundreds of thousands of comments. People left messages saying that they needed a hand or that they had a 3D printer and would be happy to make one. Within two years 7,000 people had joined the e-NABLE community and had co-produced customized hands for over 2,000 people in over 40 different countries. 

The real magic is that when people started making the design they adapted and refined it to better meet their individual needs and personal preferences and then shared their improvements and adaptations with the community. 

The adaptations are particularly exciting because they have enabled products to be developed that would never have been developed commercially because they would only be used by a small number of people. Like a hand for holding a viola bow, a hand for holding playing cards, and a Ben10 hand.

e-NABLE is one of the first revolts but it is not unique.

Earlier this year I started #HackOnWheels. We’re co-producing an online library of open source designs for fully customizable wheelchairs. We’re doing it with hackathons where people who use wheelchairs and people who don’t come together to design and make collaboratively.       

In the Making brings disabled people and designers together in local maker spaces to identify individual access challenges and 3D print solutions. At “Hackcess” young people with disabilities, designers, and hackers make personalized aids and tech. Ability Mate is an online open source library of designs and instructions for making co-produced assistive tech and TOM Global have a co-productive innovation challenge, with a prize of $10,000.

So why not celebrate co-production week by joining the revolution: download some free software like 123D Design, visit your local maker space or come to our Makathon on 16 July. Because co-production is about more than services; it is about disabled people co-designing, co-making and co-producing things.