Students from high schools around the country have been working to compete in a national engineering challenge, and it’s all focused around helping people with disabilities.
STEM students from 50 high schools across America entered the SourceAmerica Design Challenge, where participants create innovative technology to help people with disabilities in the workplace.
That's A Wrap deli in North Potomac, Maryland is known for employing people with disabilities. That's why these STEM students from Poolsville High School picked this place for their school project.
The group is one of the five finalist teams for the national engineering competition.
Learning all the back-end technology on their own, the students invented an iPad application called "Recipe Easy," which aims to help people with disabilities work more efficiently.
The students took all of the recipes from That’s A Wrap and shot videos on how to make the food, before uploading them to the app. Step by step, each recipe is show in an animation and text. It’s also hands-free.
"When you hold up a spatula, the camera will detect it and it will move to the next step of a recipe, so Steven has that as a guide for him," says junior Anjali Murthy on the help it provides one of the workers at the deli, Steven.
Charissa Garcia with SourceAmerica says the students from the five finalist schools will present their devices on stage for a panel of judges.
"They come together. They build a project to really focus on independence, empowerment, increased wages and increased employment opportunities for people with disabilities," Garcia explains of the program.
Although these students from Poolsville High School want to take the trophy home, they say they already feel good about making an impact.
More information about the program and finalists can be found
here
.