Motivation of persons with cerebral palsy through participatory design: where there is a will, there is a way

Researchers and practitioners have been seeking the active participation of persons with disabilities (PwD) in participatory design (PD) to assign a “sensitive value” to their assistive technologies (ATs). However, there is a huge gap between the intention of engagement and effective user empowerment in PD. Considering the importance of PwD’s motivation in PD to influence the extent of his/her empowerment, this study analyzes two case studies in which accommodations to PD practices, provided by PD4CAT, were intended to promote the effective participation of people with cerebral palsy in the development of their customized computational ATs—ommunicators. The cases were developed with two persons with cerebral palsy, their therapists, caregivers, developers and researchers. This paper intends to answer the research question “How do accommodations to PD practices provided by PD4CAT affect the motivation and empowerment of participants with cerebral palsy in the case studies under analysis?” The main objective of this research is to analyze the motivation and empowerment of cerebral palsy co-designers in PD practices in the two case studies. This analysis was carried out in a qualitative approach in light of the self-determination theory and levels of empowerment opportunity. Our results show that the proposed accommodations promoted self-motivation and effective participation of the two cerebral palsy co-designers in designing their communicators. Also, recommendations were proposed based on the findings of this research. We hope that these results help create design opportunities that include PwD in PD practices to design their customized ATs.