Co-Creating Sustainable Personalized Input Solutions with Individuals with Cerebral Palsy

When specialized assistive technology fails, users face a particular crisis: the original manufacturers and designers are no longer available, and no documentation exists for replacement. This Major Research Project addresses this problem through participatory co-design with an individual with cerebral palsy whose decades-old custom accessible keyboard has become non-functional. Through three co-design sessions and reflexive thematic analysis, the research examines how the participant’s embodied expertise, developed through sustained keyboard use, informs design requirements that observation alone cannot access. Findings show that the participant’s body-based knowledge functions as design authority, that functional reliability takes priority over aesthetic considerations, and that spatial optimization reflects decades of single-hand typing adaptation. The project contributes both a functional personalized keyboard and a reproducible design package that addresses the sustainability gap in assistive technology by enabling future maintenance without specialized expertise.