Skip to Search
Skip to Navigation
Skip to Content

University of Connecticut Assistive Technology Oral History Project

Diane Goodwin

Drafting at Tonka Toys, founding BlueSky Designs, and inventing several innovative devices, a da Vinci Award for Accessibility and Universal Design--this woman has an interesting career!

You probably already know about the Mount'n Mover, but she has also created other devices.

At the end of her interview I asked, "Was there a question I should have asked that I didn't?" She said, "What I like to do and what I'd like to have all folks in assistive tech do is to think about grooming the next crop of rehab engineers or assistive technologists, and in our case also focus on universal design. So we're trying to get the Eureka tent companies of the world (explained in transcript) to think about design that's more accessible too. I recruited several students at the U and gave them projects to just start problem solving and that's been helpful for me for recruiting my talented staff."

"That's really worked out well, but I also think that it does inspire people to think about as an engineer – you don't have to just crunch numbers – you can change lives and that keeps me going."

Snippet 1: "I understand your career started at Tonka Toys."

Snippet 2: "I hear you can move mountains."

Download: Full Transcript