AUGMENTED REALITY AND DIGITAL FABRICATION TECHNOLOGIES AS ASSISTIVE TOOLS FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

While during the last years universities have been embracing digital fabrication technologies in engineering, design and architecture departments, there remains a lack of provision for the students with special needs. The premise for our work is to provide disabled students with these technologies to be competitive in the job market, as well as to have access to the same opportunities as other students. This paper describes a case study carried out at Fab Lab Madrid CEU, the digital fabrication laboratory based at CEU University. It targets the use of augmented reality and digital fabrication as support technologies for students with disabilities to teach universal design in the college classroom. Augmented reality can be viewed as an assistive technology, due to its potential to minimize the effects of a disability and provide an alternative means to accomplish a particular task. It also helps in social interaction and communication. Digital fabrication laboratories (Fab Labs), on the other hand, place an emphasis on the social aspects of the space and benefits from these environments on students with disabilities are proved. Fab Lab users build confidence and engage with other people while developing technical skills. The case study will show the impact of the combination of both, augmented reality and digital fabrication technologies, as assistive tools for university students with disabilities. It will also show the benefits of the NEWTON Project platform, an innovative tool that allow students remote access to digital fabrication machines. It enables content reuse, supports generation of new material and content exchange among students and encourages new pedagogical approaches allowing the inclusion of students with disabilities.