Jasmine Black presents her group’s product, EZ Pics, which allows wheelchair users to more easily take photos, to the audience at the Access:Innovation student showcase on Friday, July 25, 2025, at Winchester Thurston School Davis Center in Bloomfield. (Photo by Caleb Kaufman/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)
An intensive summer program brought together some of Pittsburgh’s most affluent students with some of its most disadvantaged. Using 3D printing, they developed cushioned headrests, textured condiment bottles and other “human-centered” gadgets.
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On a Friday afternoon in July, Javere Harriot stood in front of a full room at the Joan Clark Davis Center for Interdisciplinary Learning and presented a 3D-printed, cushioned headrest. “ComforTap,” announced the 11th-grader at Pittsburgh Westinghouse Academy. “Click comfortably, communicate clearly.”
It was the final day of a three-week intensive program called Access:Innovation, a collaboration among Winchester Thurston, a private school in Shadyside, Youth Enrichment Services [YES], a nonprofit organization providing afterschool activities, and Pittsburgh Public Schools’ Justice Scholars Institute at Westinghouse 6-12.
Javere and his teammates designed ComforTap for Keri McKenna, a student at CLASS Community who has cerebral palsy, a condition that limits her mobility, speech and fine motor skills. She currently communicates using a button zip-tied to her wheelchair headrest, which she activates by hitting it with the side of her head.
“Imagine having to hit your head against a hard plastic button every time you try to say a single word. Picture doing this over and over, throughout the day, to communicate your thoughts and needs,” said Tatyona Couzzins, a fellow student at Westinghouse who helped develop ComforTap. “But by the end of the day, your hand might feel sore, tender and you might even develop headaches.”
A product like ComforTap — if actualized — could allow McKenna to communicate without pain via a cushioned headrest with the button fitted inside.
The summer program aimed to help students create innovative and human-centered solutions using STEM tools, combined with a social justice approach. Students from Winchester Thurston, a private school in Shadyside charging up to $38,600 in annual tuition, mixed with kids from PPS, at which 64% of students are economically disadvantaged. At one of the participating Pittsburgh schools, Westinghouse, 83% of students are economically disadvantaged.
The program was funded in part by a $250,000 matching grant received by Winchester Thurston from the Edward E. Ford Foundation to teach 20 students between grades nine to 12 from Winchester Thurston, Pittsburgh Westinghouse, Pittsburgh CAPA, Brashear High School, Environmental Charter School and Urban Pathways.
Launched in early July, the program taught high schoolers to use Computer-Aided Design [CAD] technology and 3D printing to create products to assist people with disabilities.
“We utilize, because of our location, as many resources that the city has to offer to enhance our academic programming and we think that is an experience that is unique to us, our school,” said Graig Marx, a teacher at Winchester Thurston and the program developer. “So we wanted to share that with students who might not have a similar experience, to build the community right in a way that is positive.”
For Westinghouse teacher Sean Means, the program impact went beyond developing technical skills. It allowed students from different communities to build friendships and exposed them to different post-secondary pathways.
“This was an opportunity, not only to bring the two communities together and in a way that hasn’t been done before, but it also has created a culture of empathy for people that we don’t even know,” he said.
People-first products
The program encouraged human-centered approaches to STEM design concepts by focusing on inclusivity from the beginning.
During the first week, students visited local organizations such as CLASS Community, Inglis Innovation Center and The Children’s Institute of Pittsburgh, where they met and interacted with people who have disabilities and learned about challenges they face.
During the visit to CLASS, Winchester Thurston student Perry Morrow and his team members met Angela Woodard, who is visually impaired and legally blind. In conversation, Woodard shared a frequent frustration: her difficulty distinguishing between condiment bottles. Once, she accidentally added garlic instead of cinnamon to her coffee. Inspired to help, the students sought to create a product that would help distinguish bottles faster without using Braille.
The final product was a set of bottle holders with distinct textures and bright colors to make the bottles easily identifiable for Woodard — who was pleased with the result.
“Just being able to identify products by texture and touch is a wonderful thing,” said Woodard. “If you’re in the shower and you have your eyes closed and you’re wondering which is the shampoo and which one is the conditioner, it’s just by feeling an area of it, it identifies it for you.”
Woodard said she has previously sampled equipment to assist her but those products fell short because the designers had not sought her input. By having conversations about her needs beforehand, students were able to create people-first designs that could still have universal value.
Leah Marmo, director of innovation and strategic partnerships at Inglis, said such programs can help teach empathy to students by involving the people the products are intended for at the beginning of the innovation process.
“If we’re creating products or services for any marginalized community or anyone who we don’t experience similar sort of life experiences that the end user would, we really need to involve them in the design process.”
Innovation with intentionality
Once students built initial prototypes, Winchester Thurston teachers David Nassar and Matthew Bachner guided them through the next stage: using AI tools to develop branding, slogans and a marketing strategy, instructing them to use people-first language and avoid tropes in marketing their products.
“We’re really intentional … so that when we get to the part where we’re branding and advocating and promoting the product, that students have credibility in how they’re speaking,” said Bachner.
The organizers also brought teachers from the University of Pittsburgh to deepen the students’ understanding, by introducing them to the history around disabilities and civil rights in the United States.
Deanna Sinex, director of research and program strategy at YES, and one of the designers of Access:Innovation, said the program was created to leverage student creativity by focusing on inclusivity and accessibility.
Westinghouse student Jeremiah Bowey-Sinclair said the program was a first step toward achieving his goal of becoming a mechanical engineer, and meeting new friends was an added bonus. For his Winchester Thurston teammate, Jasmine Black, the program has been eye-opening because it exposed her to the “problems of the real world”.
Their group built an accessible selfie stick for Stephen Clark, who is paralyzed waist-down and uses a wheelchair. Clark loves photography but cannot take pictures comfortably. The students developed “EZ Pics,” which can be attached to a wheelchair and includes a separate button so that people with limited motor skills can independently take photos with ease.
“I live a pretty privileged sheltered life. I go to a private school, I live in a good neighborhood,” Black said. “It honestly taught me a new mindset on how to be appreciative for the little things and being more understanding for those that don’t have those little things.”
Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at Pittsburgh’s Public Source. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org.
This article first appeared on Pittsburgh’s Public Source and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.