Principles and Practice of Assistive Technology
MIT's 6.811 is a project-based course in which interdisciplinary student teams design assistive devices, apps, or equipment for a specific person with a disability living in the Cambridge area. Lectures cover disability perspectives, human-centered design, prototyping methods, and engineering constraints particular to assistive technology, while the bulk of the term is spent in hands-on collaboration with a community partner to build a working solution tailored to their needs. Materials available through MIT OpenCourseWare include lecture notes, project guidelines, readings on disability and design ethics, and examples of past student projects. The course draws on electrical engineering, mechanical design, computer science, and direct client interviews, giving a full picture of how technical teams translate a real person's daily challenges into a functioning device. No certificate is offered, consistent with OpenCourseWare's open materials model.