It was Ross Hohnen who kindly initiated this award for my work over 12 years in starting the ACT branch of Technical Aid to the Disabled in 1979.
It was an entirely voluntary group of technical people who had their own workshops at home and were prepared to accept ‘design and make’ challenges from a central Design Coordinator (me). We finally took on a maximum of about 400 projects one year.
Sometime later I started Disability Aids Collective (1983?), using the same arrangement but to make small batches of aids based on particular one-off aids which had achieved some success and demand for more. I felt it wasn’t fair to use volunteers for a semi-commercial operation which sold the aids at a significantly lower non-profit price. They were paid $10/hr for their labour and reimbursed in the usual way to cover costs. It worked extremely well and hundreds of items were sold eventually. DAC was subsequently taken over by TADACT and renamed TAD Productions, but when I finally retired in 1991to go overseas the semi-commercial side of operations was allowed to decline, which was a pity because it served a real need in the community.
A very difficult design problem. Didn’t agree with the winning entry – the judges were not knowledgeable about the many issues involved. Very confident line of calligraphy however.