Engineer Wang Hsuan designed accessible barrier-free spaces for people with impairments
Taiwan News
Date: 2018/05/18
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A woman engineer who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
or ALS has won the president’s education award due to her efforts to design environments friendlier to people with impairments.
ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, causes the death of neurons controlling voluntary muscles. Patients gradually lose the possibility to walk around, and later also find they cannot move any other body parts, leading to a loss of speech and of the capability to eat independently. Speaking, swallowing and breathing become impossible, and no cure is known.
Wang Hsuan (王瑄), 42, studied in Great Britain and worked as a senior engineer at contract chipmaker United Microelectronics Corporation for five years before being forced to resign due to disease, the United Daily News reported. [FULL STORY]

