Cheryl wrote a book called “The Bionic Chef: Cooking With or Without Hands”.

This book begins with the story of her own personal struggle with limb loss and how through cooking she wins back an independent life-style.

Her book features valuable time-saving cooking techniques and delicious recipes that anyone - including beginner cooks and amputees - can follow to prepare good meals for friends and family. Cheryl shows how cooking can be made so simple that it can even be done with electric prosthetic hands.

“Losing my hair was the most upsetting part of my cancer treatment, but the challenge of disguising it changed my life in ways I never imagined. During chemo, I learned to wrap my head with scarves to look like fabulous accessories, not just a quick way to hide hair loss. The resulting compliments boosted my self-esteem during a time when I was afraid of losing my identity”, the inventor said.

All of this inspired Laurie to develop a new product.

After his seventeen year old autistic son suffered another mistreatment at the hands of a caregiver, Doron Somer sought to find a solution to help monitor Itamar’s safety and well being.

AngelSense has advanced data analytics optimized for personal tracking, an adaptive remote control device with algorithms and its design meets the specific requirements of children with special needs and their families.

The day Hassan’s wife gave birth, after many sleepless nights, the young father became drowsy and almost crashed the car while driving home from the hospital with his family. Reflecting on the near-miss, Hassan decided to use his electrical engineering expertise to develop an invention that eliminates accidents caused by lack of sleep.

Hassan believes his project can decrease deadly road accidents but also foresees its use on construction sites and in the military. His invention is called Wakecap.

Derek is a former US Marine who got shot in the back, in 2012, by a Taliban sniper. The wound left Herrera a paraplegic.

This student’s invention consists of a graph-deciphering software. The idea for this solution came to him in a calculus class, he said. Tapping into his passion for music, he devised a way to use musical notes to express the up and down slopes of a graph. During his summer break, he wrote the code for the software.

“Through the variation in these musical notes, it tries to give you an idea of how the graph might be laid like,” he explained.

As a toddler, still not attempting speech, Liam heard the Elton John song, “Blue Eyes,” playing on the family’s home stereo. He started saying “eye” and pointing to his own eye. He had a similar reaction to other songs’ most simple lyrics. They kept track of those words, and Tom took their list and began writing simple, catchy rock songs as a way to encourage basic speech by their son. It helped.

Tyler was inspired by the experiences of his father, Sgt. First Class Patrick Skluzacek, an Iraq war veteran.

myBivy—the name is drawn from bivouac, a camp where soldiers can rest—tracks heartbeat and movement while asleep. Over time, the app gets to know its user’s sleep habits, and can prevent the onset of panic attacks and night terrors by rousing the sleeper using sound and vibration. There is also the option of sending the sleep reports to a physician for analysis.

The student was eleven years old when his father was deployed to Iraq.

“Instead of going silently into that good night, my caregiver Cindy and I have dedicated two precious years of what remains of my life to creating a film, 'Planning for Hope.' Bold and arresting, it is aimed at unveiling the truth about Frontotemporal Disease, addressing the surrounding issues and controversies, and offering hope to those affected”, Susan explained.

After graduating from Stanford Business School, Chishti wore braces when working as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. When his braces were removed he wore a clear plastic retainer. He noticed that when he did not wear the retainer for several days his teeth would move. However, putting the retainer back on helped bring his teeth to their desired, straightened state. It was this observation that a clear plastic device was capable of moving his own teeth that led Chishti to conceive a process that became the Invisalign System.

She has entertained hundreds of friends over the past six months with a series of posed photos featuring her newest companion — an IV pole decorated by herself.

Tessa was diagnosed with brain cancer in April 2015.

"I was diagnosed with a metastatic medulloblastoma — basically a tumour in my cerebellum, the back part of my brain."

The student went straight into surgery to remove the tumour and then had six weeks of radiotherapy. It was during some down time in her first round of chemotherapy that she decided to strike a funny pose with her IV pole.

She shared a tip on her blog, on how to shell a hard boiled egg with one hand.

She shared a few tips on her blog on how to improve mouse control for people with disabilities:

"1. I reduce the sensitivity of the mouse to ‘very low’, this can be done in the control panel. Fuller instructions can be easily found online. I do need a bigger area for the mouse – a mouse pad is too small but a gaming pad will do the trick.

2. When doing graphics work, if I need to make a really small alteration like smooth a rough edge, I zoom in on the are that needs work so the pixels appear large on the screen. This makes it a little easier.

Ceri Longville, from UK, suffers from Cerebral Palsy, having very little control on her left side.
She shared a simple solution on her blog, for eating yogurt with one hand without it flying around the table: Place the yogurt inside a heavy mug.

Adapted from: http://www.disabilityhacker.com/page/2/

Charvi Shetty, Huyson Lam and Inderjit Jutla, are a team made up of individuals who've battled asthma personally and who created Spiritus, a mobile app and mouthpiece for testing pulmonary functions in asthmatic children.

This tool was built to particularly help pediatric patients and their caregivers, many of whom have trouble tracking their programs, thanks to a home version mouthpiece that connects to a smartphone app via bluetooth, capturing the lung function, and allowing the users to monitor the pulmonary functions. It works separately from the inhaler.

This author typed every word from his 160 pages book “Só o amor vale a pena” (“Only love is worth it”) with the help of a screwdriver wrapped up in duct tape.

It took almost two years for the writer to finish the book. He stayed in his room all day, typing in his computer, which was hard, because the screwdriver would often hit other buttons and he had to start over many times. But the book is finished, and available to everyone.

“This was the dream of a life time”, confessed the author.

“After I was bitten I had to adapt to a new life, wearing a prosthesis, and that condition made me learn a lot about what’s living with a different condition. I ended up writing my book, telling about that strange accident, and also about overcoming having this condition”, he explained.

Carlos moved to Canada in 2014, and his now trying to create his own business for people with disabilities.

Gertrude died in 2007, and in 2008 Max founded Puzzles To Remember, a non prof organization that designs, collects and distributes puzzles to Alzheimer’s disease facilities. He has also co-authored a book explaining Alzheimer’s to children – Why Did Grama Put Her Underwear in the Refrigerator? – now available in eight languages.

More recently, this patient created Meal Memory – a free app, available for iOS and Android, that helps the users understand how their meals affect their blood sugar.

“As a patient, I’m really excited about new tools like this built on open data streams. I started Databetes because I wanted an easier way to make sense of all my readings. I enjoy that it takes even less work to save a meal and see its effect on my blood sugar, that the whole process is as easy as taking a picture”, the inventor explained.

The app has the following features:

It all started when the artist was pregnant with her second child. Lee knew that newborns commanded a lot of time and that if she could get her eldest daughter to eat independently, it would free up more of the precious resource.

She started creating food art to help her eldest daughter eat independently back in 2008 and started posting on Instagram in 2011.

Now Samantha has a growing following of more than half a million on Instagram thanks to her creative and unique way of approaching mealtimes.