Activating Switches

I have long had an interest in using switches to activate sensory materials and was thrilled to recently see the arrival of many new products at my job.  One young lady knew immediately how to keep her hand on the yellow switch to make the pillow vibrate. she is nonverbal but laughed to indicate she enjoyed controlling the activation.

This young man is blind and I didn't know if he would like the fan or not (he did). It is harmless to touch the blades but I still wanted him to learn to avoid touching it, but tricky since he can't see. For the first time using this I brought out a cat bed I had adapted for a different purpose. I sewed a cloth bag to the bottom of the cat bed and filled it with a heavy bag of sand. At first he was confused but then seemed to like the feeling of having it tucked around his lap. Then I was able to stabilize the fan with a sock filled with sand. First I put the switch on the arm of the chair, then I moved it inside so that he only needed to feel the round boundary to sense what was sitting on top of him. I set this up with an on/off  switch so that he needed to press it only once to turn it on or off rather than having to continuously press to activate. He clearly wanted it on!!!