Enable Ireland, in partnership with DIT launched their Community Design Challenge in Microsoft in December. This year's competition was open to all students nationally and internationally and is sponsored by Leckey, a company which specialises in designing and manufacturing specialist seating and postural management devices for children with disabilities.

Leckey asked entrants to imagine how you could adapt, improve, integrate or augment their products to make them fun for the user, and as a consequence help remove the stigma of disability. Keeping in mind their mission and vision to create a design, picture, code, prototype or description of a new product Leckey could design..........

After months of collaboration between students from DIT, Purdue University in the USA and expert AT users from Enable Ireland and NCBI, we are delighted to announce that the winners of the 2015 Community Design Challenge are as follows:-

Judges' Choice Award:  'Bus Buddy'

Team Members:  Christina McCarthy, Kaitlyn Mast and Evan Markley (Purdue University, USA)


Users' Choice Award:  'Happy Openings'

Team Members:  Shelly Gaynor, Amy Sexton, Kelly McGuinness and Olivia Holbrook (Dublin Institute of Technology)


A BIG CONGRATULATIONS to the members of the winning teams!

We would like to thank all participants for their commitment and participation in this year's Community Design Challenge.  The entries offered potential solutions to real life challenges which were both creative and practical.

Plans are now underway for the Awards Ceremony which will take place on 30th September in Microsoft.

We look forward to building on this year's competition and to the potential development of some of the produce concepts to prototype stage, with the support of Dublin Institute of Technology and Purdue University in the US.

Please scroll through the images below.............