When Enabling Devices (then Toys for Special Children) was founded in 1978, the idea of adapting and creating toys and other products for people with disabilities was groundbreaking. In the nearly four decades that have elapsed, awareness of the needs of people with disabilities has increased, and the field has become more crowded. Consumers can now access our products or products made by our competitors from a variety of sources. Yet, Enabling Devices still stands out because of our longstanding commitment to providing personal, individualized and customized services to our clients.
Over the years, we have responded to clients’ unique needs by adapting and creating new products especially for them.
One of our most successful customizations was the Tactile Symbol Communicator (#4040). “The mother of a child with visual impairment, and who was also non-verbal, contacted us,” explains Vinny Livoti, Enabling Devices’ technology specialist. “She had developed a series of tactile symbols and wanted to connect those symbols with an AAC device. We worked with her to create a communicator that would incorporate those symbols.” The result? A communicator that helped that customer and so many others!
“It’s always rewarding when we can customize a product and it helps someone,” says Vinny. “We have over 900 products, but every person is different and every disability is also different, so there are always products we haven’t developed yet. It’s a challenge creating things to meet the needs of so many different people and then putting them to the test,” he says.
At Enabling Devices, we’re up for the challenge. It’s what makes our work so satisfying.
Sometimes the customized products don’t work in the first iteration, says Vinny. “But we don’t give up. We work with people until we find a solution that works for the customer.
“We do this for a living, but helping somebody and knowing we’ve changed their life, is a really nice feeling.”
In future blog posts, we will share other stories of Enabling Devices’ efforts to provide personalized services to our customers and people in the disabilities community.
