A Helping Hand Is Also A New Beginning
Aracelia Solorio walked into the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities booth at the Special Olympics World Games and tried on a prosthetic hand. The next day she walked out of the booth with a custom-fit hand, printed with her name on it!
Nine-year-old Aracelia (Ari) Solorio didn’t know her life was about to change when she peeked into the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities booth at the Special Olympics World Games 2015. She was hoping, perhaps, there would be a game to play.
Once inside, Ari was instantly drawn to the brightly colored plastic prosthetic hands provided by Google.org grantee, e-NABLE. Lucas Lok, who works for AIO Robotics — the supplier of the 3D printing technology for the e-NABLE designs — was volunteering in the Google booth and helped the young girl try on one of the display hands. Born without fingers on her left hand, Ari bent her wrist and watched with delight as the pink plastic fingers curled into a fist.
“I thought, ‘Yay! I can use it to ride my bike,” Aracelia said.
Earlier this year, Google announced $20 million in funding through a new initiative called the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities to back emerging assistive technologies. One of its first grantees is e-NABLE, a global network of volunteers that’s increasing the availability of 3D printed prosthetic hands.
The 3D printed prosthetics are easy and inexpensive to create. “This means new ones can be readily made to fit growing children,” said Erika Johansson, the product marketing manager for Google.org.
“One of the main challenges for families is that kids outgrow their prosthetics,” Johansson said. “With this technology they can print new ones as their kids grow.”
To create a custom-fit for Ari, the AIO Robotics team measured Ari’s hand and worked through the night to print and assemble the plastic pieces for her new hand. On Sunday, the closing day of the World Games, the fifth grader returned to get her new pink prosthetic. Wearing an all-pink outfit — baseball cap, shorts and a t-shirt with the word “love” on it — Ari watched quietly as a volunteer slipped the pink hand around her wrist, securing it with a Velcro strap.
Ari smiled, flexing her new fingers:
“It’s comfortable,” she said.
Her mother, Maria Solorio, said Ari has never worn a prosthetic.
“Everything I’ve heard about them is they’re big, bulky and super expensive,” Solorio said. “This is awesome.”
A student at Rockdale Elementary, an arts magnet school within the Los Angeles Unified School District, Ari loves to dance and says math is her favorite subject. She also loves to read, and the “Harry Potter” series is among her favorite books.
But with her new pink hand, Ari is looking forward to trying something new. “Maybe I can do the monkey bars now,” Ari states matter-of-factly. “I’ve never been able to do those before.”
Her mom said one of the other vendors at the World Games Festival had a display of large-scale building blocks she knew her daughter would love to play with.
“We’re going to go test-drive this thing,” she said.
e-NABLE received a $600,000 grant from the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities project, which will allow the organization to upscale its work and “bring it to even more people,” Johansson said.
Traditional prosthetics can cost several thousands of dollars to customize and create, but 3D printing has revolutionized the technology. e-NABLE’s designs are also open-sourced, which means anybody with a 3D printer can fabricate a prosthetic, Johnansson said.
In May, Google also announced it had granted $500,000 to the nonprofit group World Wide Hearing, which is developing low-cost hearing-loss diagnosis kits and hearing aids.
As a World Games supplier, Google.org joins Special Olympics in a shared desire to build a world that is more inclusive for everyone.
