NYIT students engineer inventions for contest to make workplaces more accessible

Since she was a child, Skylynn Kilfoil Greaves, of Freeport, has wanted to build products that would help improve the lives of the people around her.

As the daughter of a legally blind father and mother with a learning disability, Kilfoil Greaves, 21, said she’s always felt a connection to the disabled community and sees creating technology that helps disabled people complete everyday tasks as a worthwhile challenge.

“Growing up I would see things around me and think, ‘I can fix that, or I could build that,’” she said. “I knew that if I had a way to make things better, I would.”

Now, as a junior at New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury studying mechanical and aerospace engineering, Kilfoil Greaves and a team of three other students have developed a device to help workers on the autism spectrum at Spectrum Designs in Port Washington. The device, an automatic mixer for blending colored inks, has shown potential in making a difficult task easier for the nonprofit's employees, an employee at the agency said. 

“I always try to remind myself that as engineers, as students, our main goal is to help others,” she said. 

Kilfoil Greaves and her team will present their invention on April 9 at the CREATE (Cultivating Resources for Employment with Assistive Technology) Symposium in Albany, a contest featuring inventions hosted by New York State Industries for the Disabled. This year, two groups of NYIT engineering students partnered with nonprofits Spectrum and AHRC Nassau to create devices to make the workplace more accessible.

The annual contest, now in its 11th year, aims to illuminate the challenges that disabled New Yorkers face in the labor market and the ways technology can make work accessible, said Maureen O’Brien, president and CEO of NYSID, a nonprofit that works with a network of companies to provide employment opportunities to disabled New Yorkers.

“Understanding what the barriers are to employment for these folks is good for anyone," O'Brien said, adding that nearly 67% of disabled New Yorkers aren't in the labor force.

Long Islanders with disabilities had an unemployment rate of 8.9% in 2023, compared with a jobless rate of 3.6% for all Long Islanders at the end of that year, according to state Labor Department figures. Coming out of the pandemic, disabled New Yorkers had an unemployment rate of 11.9% in 2022, according to a 2023 state comptroller’s office report. The 2022 jobless rate for non-disabled New Yorkers was 4.3%.

Chris Rosa, president and CEO of The Viscardi Center, an Albertson-based nonprofit serving adults and children with disabilities, said efforts like CREATE are paramount in a world where those with disabilities can struggle to land gainful, stable employment. 

“Assistive technology is really empowering to prospective employees with disabilities," said Rosa, who uses a wheelchair. “It helps to ameliorate barriers in the workplace and levels the playing field for workers with disabilities and allows them to perform to their potential."

Exposing 'students to the disabled community'

Both Spectrum Designs, a clothing and apparel screen printing outfit, and Glen Head-based AHRC Nassau, which partners with Long Island businesses to provide contract work for disabled jobseekers, said the contest provides an opportunity for the engineers of tomorrow to learn more about an often overlooked population.

The contest “exposes students and future engineers to the disabled community,” O’Brien said. “I am not sure that this is an experience that a lot of students get in college.”

O’Brien said individuals with disabilities often face hurdles, like discrimination or employer misunderstandings about what it means to make a workplace accessible.

Getting hands-on experience

At AHRC Nassau, an upcoming contract with a coffee bean distributor led to concerns about disabled workers lifting heavy bags of beans, said Pamela Curtiss, assistant director of social enterprises with AHRC. 

“Some of these boxes are going to be heavy, 50 pounds or higher,” Curtiss said. 

That’s where sophomore Russell Wetzler, 19, of Bethpage, a mechanical engineering student at NYIT, and four other classmates stepped in, hoping to provide an engineering solution.

“I love getting hands on with projects and prototyping,” said Wetzler, who worked with AHRC to develop a device called the T.R.A.M (Transport Ready Assisting Machine), roughly the size of a shopping cart, which acts as a mini forklift to transport smaller packages.

“It’s a lift designed to be accessible for all users, specifically the ones working at AHRC to better accommodate their needs,” Wetzler said.

Spencer Pusey, 33, a decorations specialist at Spectrum, said efforts like the CREATE Symposium put a spotlight on the importance of hiring workers with disabilities. 

“It’s really valuable from my perspective to have every type of person regardless of their disability, gender, race, or sometimes their past to get that chance to be part of society,” said Pusey, who is on the autism spectrum.

Building the ink mixer

One of the least popular tasks at Spectrum among its 77 workers — nearly 70% of whom are on the spectrum — is the mixing of viscous inks to match customer requests. The process, Pusey said, is labor intensive and often messy given how industrial grade ink for clothing is designed not to bleed.

The BlendBot, a specially designed lid that attaches to the ink buckets used to mix colors, has several whisk attachments at varying heights that mix the thick dye more fluidly.

Kilfoil Greaves and her team continue to tweak their design ahead of their invention presentation, and Pusey said the prototype has shown promise.

During the April capstone of the CREATE contest, student teams from across the state will present their final prototypes to judges. At stake are cash prizes of $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 for third, second and first place winners.

As for Kilfoil Greaves, who spent Friday afternoon making the final touches on her team's mixing machine, win or lose, the work behind the invention has been well worth it. 

“Even if we don’t win, that’s not my concern,” she said. “We still helped individuals and still created assistive technology that can make the world more inclusive.”