Sam Saccone / Staff Photographer / ss324006@ohiou.edu

Dan Bohner demonstrates team MeToo’s lifting vest, which helps a person with an upper limb loss lift heavy objects with ease, Saturday in front of Stocker Center.

A gear that helps the wheelchair-bound conquer Jeff Hill and a prosthetic limb that allows a local farmer to grip tools with half the energy — Russ College of Engineering and Technology seniors presented these and four other design projects Saturday.

The 49 students, divided into six teams, spent their senior year developing products that enhance employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Each group collaborated with a local client, managed a budget and set a specific goal for its products, said Colleen Carow, the college’s director of External Relations.

The college paid for the assembly of these products as part of the student curriculum fee, Carow said, adding that each group had a particular budget for its product.

“These projects are not going to just go back to the lab and sit on a shelf,” Carow said. “They are actually going to be used by the people they were designed for.”

One team developed a gearing mechanism to help Carolyn Lewis, director of WOUB Center for Public Media, move up Athens’ hills. The product would retail for $1,300 and can be attached to a standard wheelchair, according to the group.

The mechanism makes going uphill in a wheelchair 33 percent easier, said team member Melissa Feigi. She added that with her team’s product, a wheelchair moves slower up a slope but exerts less force.

“Even though some ramps are (American Disability Act) approved, they’re still not practical,” Lewis said, adding that the group’s invention relieves some of the pressure she feels when she tries to wheel uphill.

Another group designed a product that helps disabled people sort page divider tabs more efficiently at Hocking Valley Industries in Logan.

Currently, HVI employees fill bags with 25 tabs — five of each color — and are paid by how many bags they fill manually, said team member Dan Deland.

With the team’s product, employees pull a lever that releases the exact number of tabs needed to fill each bag. Employees can fill more bags daily because they don’t have to worry about sorting colors and counting correctly, he added.

To help local dairy farmer Tim Long accomplish physically demanding agricultural tasks, one group added a pulley system and springs to his prosthetic arm, allowing him to use 50 percent less energy when gripping.

“Your body is like a chameleon,” Long said. “It blends in with the [prosthetic] limb more than you would think. I got used to this new one pretty quickly.”

Other products included a ballpoint pen assembly jig that helps a disabled employee with limited dexterity assemble pens more easily, a cardboard cutting station that makes cutting cardboard more safe for disabled individuals at SW Resources in Parkersburg and a lifting vest that helps an individual with upper limb loss carry heavy boxes at his job.