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WILLIAM LI: My
name is William Li.

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I'm a Ph.D. Student in
computer science at MIT.

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And for this course, I
was a graduate instructor

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for 6.811, principles
and practice

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of assistive technology.

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And that meant I was one of
the c-instructors of the class.

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GRACE TEO: Cool.

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And my name is Grace Teo.

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I am a lecturer for 6.811.

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And basically our class is
about pairing students up

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with clients with disabilities
to create a customized piece

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of assistive technology
for them over the course

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of the semester.

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So the reason why I got
into teaching this course

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is partly because of William,
because William invited me.

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But also the
background to that was

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that over the summer
at MIT, I had founded

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a very similar class
called Open Style Lab,

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where we teamed up
students with clients

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with disabilities as well.

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Except that in that case,
we were asking the students

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to create clothing for them.

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So this entire area
of designing around

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a constraints of disability
is very interesting to me

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because, first of all, there's
very immediate community

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impact.

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I think because
of that too, then

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the students have
a lot of motivation

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to try their best to learn
because they see that they're

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really impacting a
real person and helping

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to solve a real problem instead
of just doing problem sets

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or solving kind of
abstract challenges.

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And I think, to be honest,
one of the things I love

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is seeing the students
get comfortable talking

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to and talking about people with
disabilities over time as well.

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Because I think very
often in society

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there's a huge amount of
discomfort surrounding

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disability.

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And it's not that
people don't care

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it's just that they don't
want to say the wrong things,

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you don't want to
be offensive, and so

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equipping our students
with the skills

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to be able to engage with the
community is really important.

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WILLIAM LI: So I was
fortunate as an undergrad

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to work at a children's
rehabilitation hospital

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one summer and learn about the
space of assistive technology.

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And I ended up doing that
in my undergraduate thesis.

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And so when I went
to grad school,

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I wanted to continue working
in assistive technology.

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And I was fortunate to be
able to do that here at MIT.

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So my master's
thesis was working

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a lot in speech recognition for
people with different speech

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challenges with
multiple sclerosis that

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maybe affects their speech.

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So I think it's a
really-- similar to Grace,

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I think it's a really
fascinating area to work in,

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very personally meaningful,
but also very interesting

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design constraints
and challenges

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in working in this space.

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And so with respect to the
class, my master's thesis

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adviser Seth Teller started
this class back in 2011.

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I was fortunate to
be the first teaching

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assistant in the class.

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And then to get involved
in it with a big team,

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including Grace for sure,
over the past semester.