This Halloween, Émile will have a Halloween costume for his wheelchair, thanks to Montréal makers who are getting together to create a dragon in his castle. Last Halloween, Émile was saddened because other kids could not see the back of his Halloween costume.
For Émile, who was born with a disability that requires him to use a wheelchair, Halloween has not always been easy. Accessibility issues posed by escalators, stairs or mouldings on floors create additional hurdles to mobility. As Boston marathon victim Jessica Kensky claims “I am living in a world that is not built for me.” Public transportation, hospitals, schools, grocery stores, shopping centres and restaurants are often not designed keeping in mind that people with mobility issues might want to access these places.
For people requiring an assisted mobility device, navigating cities is not easy, and Halloween is no exception. Even worse, Halloween costumes are not designed for kids who wear them sitting down.
…
This year, Émile connected with the maker movement to get a special Halloween costume for himself and his wheelchair — a dragon in his castle.
The group gathered the necessary materials to create Chad: polystyrene to build the castle around the wheelchair, thermoplastic to form the dragon head, silk and green polylactic acid (PLA) filament to 3D print the dragon scales, an umbrella to build the wings, foam to build parts of the costume and a set of Hallowing — programmable eyes for the dragon.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
