Mission Statement
The mission of the Adaptive Design Association (ADA) is to ensure that children with disabilities obtain the customized equipment they need to fully participate in home, school, and community life. To this end, ADA offers training in adaptive design, builds customized equipment, and promotes a broad-based expansion of adaptive design services and education in schools, hospitals, and communities.
Our Vision
ADA envisions a day when adaptive design services are widely recognized as an indispensable resource for children and all people with disabilites and customized equipment is being produced quickly, affordably, and locally.
This day will come when:
- Teachers, therapists, and parents move quickly from seeing a need, to sketching or describing a design, to conferring with other team members, to building the item themselves (or with another fabricator), to using the new piece of equipment with the child;
- Universities integrate adaptive design and equipment fabrication into professional preparation curricula for therapists and teachers;
- Schools and agencies make certain that workshops are readily available, well-supplied, and well-staffed;
- The larger community supports customized equipment fabrication by volunteering time and talent, donating materials, and making financial contributions.
To realize this vision ADA:
- Generates awareness that most children with disabilities need more custom-made adaptive equipment than they can get.
- Demonstrates that adaptive design services are necessary and cost-effective.
- Trains professionals, parents, and the broader community to design and build customized equipment with common materials, including corrugated cardboard, fabric, wood, plastic, and basic electronics.
- Facilitates the problem-solving process from project identifica tion, assessment, brainstorming, and information gathering to equipment design, construction, and implementation.
- Promotes creativity and innovative design so children get not only essential equipment but also unique and clever equipment that will prompt new skills and facilitate full participation.
- Encourages school-wide participation so all staff and students know that their ideas and skills are welcome and vital.
- Works with professors to integrate adaptive design and construction into university curricula. 8. Supports the establishment of adaptive design workshops in schools, agencies, and communities, and facilitates information sharing through conferences, newsletters, and the web.
