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A group of University of Rhode Island engineering students designed customized assistive devices to help a disabled woman start her own greeting card company.

Rebecca Beaton, a Warwick resident who can only control the movement of her head and neck due to cerebral palsy, was fitted with devices that will enable her to operate a computer, paint, draw and use and iPad and smartphone.

Beaton received a self-employment grant to start a greeting card company from Rhodes to Independence through the URI College of Pharmacy.

“Our goal was to make an interface for her so she can use these tools with her head,” said Chelsae Meier, a biomedical engineering major at URI and leader of the engineering team. “We wanted to improve the equipment that she had and give her more options for work and hobbies.”

The students created a lightweight helmet and attached a flexible copper rod that could be used as a pointer or could be adapted to grip a pencil, paintbrush, or other tools. One of the challenges was designing a special conductive foam tip for the headstick so it could operate a touchscreen device.

In addition to Meier, Christopher DeSanto of West Warwick, Gemma Downey of Rehoboth, Mass., Brooke McCarthy of Plympton, Mass., and Vanessa Landes, Christina Liese and Tanya Wang of Cranston all worked on the project. They are being paid as summer interns through the URI Biomedical Engineering Program.

When the students visited Rebecca at the West Bay Residential Services in Warwick, where she spend her days working, they offered to design customized devices – a wheelchair armrest, a keyboard overlay, and a modified headstick - for other disabled individuals who visit the center.