Press "Enter" to skip to content

Month: October 2025

Be Seen! on Halloween – free workshop Oct 29th

Published October 24, 2025 by openassistivetech_e02gls

Add lights, reflectors, reflective tape, sparkly jewels, and other glowing things to your mobility gear, for fun and safety! If you have a wheelchair, scooter, walker, rollator, cane, or even a bike or stroller, and you’d like to bling it up, come by the San Francisco Disability Cultural Center, 165 Grove St. in the afternoon on Wednesday, October 29th, 1pm – 3pm.

You can help us out a lot by registering here: https://disabilityculturalcenter.org/event/been-seen-on-halloween/

We will have LED light strips, portable battery packs, reflective tape, glow in the dark paint pens, and other supplies.

a gleaming wheel of blue and green lights with a small battery pack attached

vince lopez in a flat cap holding a walker decorated with glowing lightstrips

Vincent Lopez from the ILRCSF will be there as well; he runs their wheelchair repair program and was co-host last year for GOAT’s Be Seen workshop. He can be available to consult for questions about repair and maintenance during the workshop as well!

If you can’t make it, and you’d like to get some of our useful lights or individual help, let us know and we can likely work something out — email to liz@openassistivetech.org.

A lady smiling proudly as she shows off her newly illuminated walker with spiral light strips attached.

Two asian american women smiling, one seated in powerchair with lights attached

Visiting the DCC:
map showing 165 grove street, at intersection of Grove and Van Ness, close to Civic Center BART or the Van Ness Muni train stop
Civic Center BART, Van Ness Muni station, or any of the many and frequent buses are a great way to get to the Civic Center area. The closest parking garage is at 360 Grove St. between Gough and Franklin.

Leave a Comment

Community DIFxTech talk on Software design for assistive tech

Published October 8, 2025 by Liz Henry

This isn’t part of GOAT, but it’s a close enough intersection that I’d like to use this blog to invite any readers to attend. In my work with Borealis Philanthropy as program manager for the DIFxTech fund, I’ve been hosting a series of talks with our grantees, advisors, and other experts and advocates, for ways we mash up disability justice with technological innovation. If you’d like to be added to the invite, please email me at difxtech@borealisphilanthropy.org.

Next up in our DIFxTech Community Conversation series:

Software design, AI, Privacy, and Disability
Maitreya Shah and Ariana Aboulafia
Host: Liz Henry
Tuesday, Oct 28, 2025 11:00am PDT – 12:30pm PDT

headshot of ariana in a nice suit, looking lawyerly

maitreya standing in front of a neutral background, holding a white cane

Maitreya Shah and Ariana Aboulafia, from the Center for Democracy in Technology & American Association of People with Disabilities, will talk about their organizations’ recent work on assistive technology and privacy by design. This guidebook, Inclusive Innovation: How to Incorporate Privacy into Inclusive Design for Assistive Technologies, was published in July this year for the 35th anniversary of the ADA, aims to provide startups with easy, actionable steps to incorporate privacy into their design process.

Maitreya Shah is a lawyer and researcher, a current DIFxTech grant recipient for a joint project with the Bazelon Center, with extensive experience working at the intersection of technology regulation and disability justice. He is Technology Policy Director at American Association of People with Disabilities; previously, he was a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Ariana Aboulafia is the Disability Rights in Technology Policy Lead at the Center for Democracy in Technology. An attorney with a strong background in disability rights, law, and public interest advocacy, Ariana previously served as an officer to the Journalism Department at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as well as an assistant public defender in Miami-Dade County.

This talk will be recorded and shared, along with the chat and transcript. Previous DIFxTech Community Conversations are available at:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1h_Zns7pdZfCGJyq6EygxbyOCrcvFc0uY

Access: ASL interpreters and Certified Deaf Interpreters will be on the call; there will be a text chat; and the session will be recorded with a transcript. If you have particular accommodations you would like to request, or any questions about accessibility, please contact difxtech@borealisphilanthropy.org.

screenshot of a zoom call gallery from a previous difxtech talk, with a dozen or so of the many attendees showing

More about DIFxTech:
* https://www.fordfoundation.org/news-and-stories/news-and-press/news/borealis-philanthropy-and-ford-foundation-launch-1-million-disability-x-tech-fund-to-advance-leadership-of-people-with-disabilities-in-tech-innovation/
* https://borealisphilanthropy.org/2024/12/09/the-disability-inclusion-fund-moves-over-4-75-million-to-disabled-led-organizations/

Leave a Comment

Fundraiser for GOAT!

Published October 7, 2025 by Liz Henry

We are raising money to support GOAT’s program activities for the rest of 2025 and early 2026!

Your donations will support:

  • archiving, preservation work, more scanning of complete books, and adding better metadata to our catalogue of DIY assistive tech
  • wheelchair maintenance and repair zines free for our community, and nationally – distributed in partnership with Disability Culture Labs
  • wheelchair, walker, scooter, and powerchair maintenance and repair tool kits, free for people who need them in the San Francisco Bay Area
  • our Bay Area hackathons, reverse engineering, and modification workshops for assistive tech
  • collaborations with University of Washington and Berkeley assistive tech design labs, hack sessions, and student projects

And we have a  generous donor willing to match up to 20K!

You can read more about how to donate to GOAT  , or email liz@openassistivetech.org if you have other ideas about how to support our activities!

GOAT Business!

Leave a Comment

C.R.I.P.S.R.I.S.E. collab: 3D printing for Permobil chairs

Published October 2, 2025 by Liz Henry

As part of GOAT’s collaboration with C.R.I.P.S.R.I.S.E., I’d like to quickly show off their newest 3D printable design, a hook designed to work with the Permobil’s Unitrack mounting system. You can take a look (or print one yourself!) on Thingiverse:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7150714

3d model of a bag hook mount for a powerchair

One of GOAT’s workshop participants asked for this for his chair, and would like to test different styles of hook. There are some printable designs already out there, for example, on yeggi.com: https://www.yeggi.com/q/permobil%20unitrack/

After taking a look at this and other designs, @CriptasticHacker ended up using this model as a base, improving on it, and publishing it with an explanation of his changes.

I was curious to see this printed with a strong nylon or carbon filament, but was persuaded that we should first try this PetG model before amping things up to print in tougher filament that will take many more hours of run time to complete.

We’re looking forward to installing it and giving it a good test!

 

 

 

Leave a Comment