Low-cost, 3D printable gadgets permit wheelchair customers and folks with grip energy points to play billiards. Photo by Nat Kallet.
The Power of Play:
Free adaptive designs enhance sports for disabled Veterans
July 17, 2026
By Tristan Horrom
VA Research Communications
“Being able to participate definitely puts you in a better state of mind and improves your quality of life. It brings you back to reality.”
VA engineers on the Human Research Engineering Laboratories (HERL) are partnering with the University of Illinois to create a repository of adaptive equipment designed to assist folks with disabilities take part in sports and different leisure actions.
The open-source, on-line repository already incorporates free designs for adaptive gadgets for billiards, miniature golf, swimming, and lots of different actions. Each system will be constructed utilizing 3D-printing and available supplies, designed to maintain the fabrication prices under $100 to be accessible to as many individuals as attainable.
Device permits a golf membership to connect to the arm. Photo by Nat Kallet
Dr. Jonathan Duvall, the undertaking’s principal investigator, mentioned he and his colleagues are working to search out the steadiness between participation and accessibility. Right now, the supply of adaptive tools is extraordinarily restricted exterior of assistive gadgets for actions of every day dwelling. While adaptive sports tools is at present obtainable, corresponding to a selected wheelchair designed for basketball, it will probably value hundreds of {dollars}. HERL’s low-cost choices permit Veterans and others with disabilities to be lively and take part of their communities with out breaking the financial institution.
Research has shown one of an important components affecting high quality of life is recreation and leisure. While being lively improves each bodily and psychological well being, it’s simply as essential to be half of a neighborhood and work together with family and friends.
Many Veterans with disabilities have created their very own makeshift gadgets to remain concerned with actions they get pleasure from, typically even out of cardboard and craft provides in keeping with Duvall, however the outcomes are often not very sturdy. Even Duvall, himself an influence wheelchair consumer as a result of of a spinal twine damage, started making his personal gadgets with 3D printing so he may play pool and different video games with buddies.
To assist present extra everlasting options and produce them to extra customers, the analysis crew requested for ideas from members of numerous affected teams, such because the Paralyzed Veterans of America. By soliciting concepts from the general public, they hoped to search out the areas of want that might assist the most individuals.
Air Force Veteran Sean Ferry grew to become a undertaking contributor after he discovered of it via the Keystone chapter of Paralyzed Veterans of America in Pittsburgh, of which HERL director Dr. Rory Cooper can also be a member.
“For me personally, it’s very important and exciting what they’re doing,” mentioned Ferry. “When you get hurt, your life changes really fast. When I started seeing adaptive sports, I wanted to try them. You don’t have to be stuck in the house. The engineers’ inventions, that can be printed right out on 3D printers, could really change a person’s life.”
Ferry has contributed a number of concepts to the undertaking, together with a tool that enables a wheelchair consumer to ship a bowling ball down the lane with a push.
A tool to push a bowling ball down the alley. Photo courtesy of University of Illinois.
Anyone can submit an thought to the crew via the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s online portal. Once an thought has been accepted and the engineers begin engaged on a prototype, they collaborate with the submitter to refine and take a look at the system.
“They’re very open to my input and any roadblocks I face or other suggestions I have,” defined Ferry. “Jon [Duvall]’s wheels are always spinning on how to do something new and make things available to people with disabilities.”
Along with the bowling ramp, Ferry has helped HERL researchers take a look at a billiards stick and bridge and a putter designed to assist folks in wheelchairs play miniature golf.
The on-line repository at present hosts fifteen designs with full documentation, together with a number of grips for billiard cues; swim paddles for folks with restricted hand dexterity; grips for desk tennis paddles; miniature golf golf equipment; a bowling pusher; a fishing reel; and a rowing oar attachment to permit blind rowers to maintain the orientation of their oars right.
Swimmer utilizing adaptive paddles. Photo ©Sage Publications.
The HERL crew has even developed a catapult to permit an individual with spinal twine damage to throw a beanbag for cornhole. While the cornhole catapult didn’t make the repository as a result of of the manufacturing and engineering required, the crew did take it to the Buckeye Wheelchair Games in Geneva, Ohio, for an indication. Ferry received to check out the catapult as properly, and verified how enjoyable it may be.
More prototypes are within the pipeline in addition to refinements to present gadgets, corresponding to including a motor to the bowling ramp that might permit wheelchair customers to make small changes to the angle and should even allow them to apply spin to the ball.
Duvall can also be focused on discovering a number of purposes for the identical gadgets. For instance, the desk tennis grip may be helpful for different actions that contain holding one’s hand perpendicular, corresponding to pickleball, and a tool that attaches a mini golf membership to the forearm may be tailored for croquet.
A grip to make it simpler to carry a desk tennis paddle. Photo by Nat Kallet.
Duvall and the crew are hopeful members of the incapacity neighborhood will proceed to submit new concepts and work with them to convey extra options to actuality. He harassed the significance of assembly folks the place they’re, since each individual is completely different, and dealing straight with the individuals who would use their innovations.
That’s additionally why the crew has not pursued patents on any of their designs. They need their gadgets for use and shared as broadly as attainable.
“We thought it was a good idea to get these ideas out there – to let people make them themselves rather than start a company that would produce or license them,” mentioned Duvall. “We wanted to remove any roadblocks to people getting these devices.”
Ferry has seen firsthand how lifechanging these adaptive gadgets will be for folks with disabilities and hopes others will submit their concepts.
“Being able to participate definitely puts you in a better state of mind and improves your quality of life. It brings you back to reality,” he defined. “You’re almost not disabled, you’re differently abled. You see everything you can do. You’ve got to get paralyzed people out doing things. It really clears the mind.”
HERL is a analysis partnership between VA and the University of Pittsburgh. Primary funding for the Power of Play undertaking was offered to the University of Illinois from the National Institute of Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDLRR).
If you’ve got an thought for an adaptive system that you simply want to see developed, go to the undertaking’s submission website here.
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