Hackability is a nonprofit founded in Turin in 2016 to bring together the skills of designers, makers, artisans, with the needs of autonomy of people with disabilities and grow communities that through co-design and digital fabrication create new, customized solutions for autonomy and care, producing social inclusion and participation. To achieve this goal, it has developed a methodology of co-design and open innovation that, in addition to allowing the creation of common or complex objects, home automation solutions, principles, new low-cost and scalable services, uses co-design as a tool to develop social inclusion, new skills and new knowledge about the needs of autonomy. In 2016, the Politecnico di Torino made Hackability’s methodology its own by launching the Hackability4PoliTo initiative that allows students, as an alternative to the traditional “Technologies for Disability” exam, to co-design together with people with disabilities. In 2018, the Barilla group chose Hackability to develop solutions that facilitate autonomy in the kitchen for people with disabilities and the elderly, that same year Hackability won the “Io Lavoro” award from the Piedmont Region. In 2019 Hackability was called by Juventus to co-design solutions that improve the experience of people with disabilities in the Allianz Stadium complex and in Paris by Harrys and Wasa to imagine new accessible bakery products; the methodology was also tested in China in Shanghai by New York University. In 2020, Toyota Motor Italia and Arriva Sadem, chose Hackability to create, together with people with disabilities, tools and solutions for a more accessible personal and collective mobility and, again in 2020, the methodology won the mention of the Compasso d’Oro ADI Award. Hackability is also committed to the dissemination of technological culture among vulnerable groups with projects such as HackabilityLab and Tech4Inclusion. In the months of the first lockdown with the self-funded project Hackability@Home has supported more than 750 people in the use of technology, Civic Action has included Hackability@Home among the 50 best Italian practices in the lockdown period. In five years Hackability has realized more than 120 projects and involved about 500 people, has active groups in Turin, Cuneo, Parma, Milan and Matera.
Hackability
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