Ciranda - an inclusive floor seating positioning system and social enterprise

Abstract

One of the first challenges for many children with physical disabilities is to sit independently. A floor seating positioning system enables this milestone, helping a child to maintain eye level with other children, play and learn on the floor, rectify his or her posture, and, therefore, helps to include the child within his or her social spectrum. Ciranda is the first comprehensive floor seat solution in Brazil to attend to those needs. The project collected anthropometric data from 370 children who were unable to sit without support. A sample of 37 families of these children was visited, observed, and interviewed. A project requirement compiled key insights from the field data to support a multidisciplinary team of collaborators to co-design solutions. The project resulted in two floor seating positioning systems to attend to different needs. One is a social enterprise where the children’s parents and the community build the seat while the child in need and his or her friends engage in entertainment. The other is a salable seat that helps to raise funds for the social enterprise. The model also unravels other challenges common to assistive technologies, such as access to a device and training for the use and maintenance of the device.