Advances
in 3-D printing have lowered the cost while boosting ease of use, allowing makerspaces
to crop up throughout the K-12 landscape, at libraries, and on more and more college and university campuses.
In
these collaborative spaces, students, faculty, and community members can get
hands-on experience in design, problem-solving, and turning concepts into
physical products. All of that dovetails with calls for greater
entrepreneurialism and more interdisciplinary cooperation, and for schools to
teach more skills immediately useful in the modern workplace.
Any
institution or group that has such a space or is considering creation of one needs
to remember to design for access by individuals representing a wide range of
ages, abilities, languages, and learning styles, so that everyone has an equal
opportunity to participate and contribute. Faculty and students at the College
of Engineering and DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and
Technology) at the University of Washington, Seattle, have created a set of guidelines governing accessibility and universal design for makerspaces.