Co-Making

Co-making is a participatory practice in which people with disabilities work directly with collaborators — researchers, AI assistants, peers, or family members — to build physical assistive technology together, rather than being passive recipients of devices designed and fabricated by others. Where co-design centers on ideation and requirements, co-making extends the partnership into the embodied construction phase: selecting components, assembling hardware, orienting sensors, testing behavior, and debugging failures. Co-making surfaces accessibility needs that software-only co-design cannot — spatial orientation, module placement, line of sight, mechanical attachment — and is particularly relevant for DIY assistive-technology toolkits aimed at non-technical users with visual, motor, or cognitive disabilities.