In less than six months of working together, a UC Irvine doctoral candidate and the director of a charitable organization offering recreational therapy for the visually impaired have developed special canoes that allow the blind to paddle solo.

The idea had been on the mind of the nonprofit Makapo Aquatics Project’s executive director, RJ De Rama, for several years, but plans were roadblocked by expensive designs or labor-intensive project proposals.

The missing link, as it turned out, was UCI graduate student Mark Baldwin, who has a knack for creating low-cost, do-it-yourself solutions for challenges facing the blind community.

Read the full story at The Los Angeles Times.