In recent years, the making phenomenon has shown great potential in personal design and fabrication capabilities using modern fabrication tools (e.g., 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC machines), small computing/electronics (e.g., Arduino, Raspberry Pi, sensors), and related crafting techniques. People have engaged in creative making to develop a wide variety of assistive devices (e.g., prostheses, orthotics), adaptations (e.g., cane-hanger / cup-holder for wheelchairs), and support systems (e.g., tactile braille maps). While there are some very successful projects, substantive gaps remain between current traction and overall potential in accessible making. To help address this, it is important to identify the kinds of ecosystems involved. To better understand the relationship between people with disabilities and making, we conducted a systematic literature review on design-related ACM conferences between January 2010 and December 2023. Our analysis highlights important aspects and trends in recent research with different communities, as well as the adopted methods for inclusive design, development, and evaluation. Our results provide structured framing and guidance for researchers and practitioners across trends, procedures, and multi-layered contributions in the area of making and accessibility.
Initial results were published in ASSETS 2022: Systematic Literature Review on Making and Accessibility | Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
The final dataset of qualitative content analysis with the selected papers and assocaited codes: https://osf.io/kf3j6/files/osfstorage/66bcc8605305179f48dbe3ca