BURLINGTON, N.C. — Faculty at Elon University are making sure their students have the tools they need to perform well in the classroom.
You may remember Andrew Hartle, who became paralyzed 4 and a half years ago after a diving incident in Puerto Rico.
Hartle suffered a C6 spinal cord injury and became paralyzed from the chest down with only limited mobility in his arms.
He's a senior at Elon University taking journalism classes but due to his disability, one course became a challenge.
"I tried to stick more with the writing assets of journalism and so I never really took a lot of optional broadcast class and stuff," said Hartle.
The class involved using a camera.
"I can't even set one up without having all of this help," said Hartle.
Turns out, the class was mandatory. So, he took his concerns to his professor.
"I certainly was taken back. How am I going to help someone quadriplegic to shoot a camera go out to the field and be a reporter," expressed Professor Israel Balderas.
Balderas and another faculty member put their heads together to find a solution.
"We tended to agree that we need to clamp something to his wheelchair so he could see the subject through the camera of the phone and the phone was a solution," said Senior Lecturer Randy Piland.
With 30 years of photo-journalist experience, Piland grabbed some gadgets and created an 'articulate arm clamp'. It bends just like a real arm.
"That way he can rig the phone out like a camera right in front of Andrew," said Piland.
"The fact that an iPhone can shoot 4K video that is pretty close to industry standers," said Hartle.
The next step was to figure out how to operate the phone. That's where an apple watch came in handy.
"Instead of moving around my arm around a bit to touch the button on an iPhone, I could just have the watch right here and I can just touch one button on the surface of it and bam start recording" said Hartle.
It was a solution that only took a week to create.
"It takes effort. It takes a team. It takes colleagues," said Balderas.
"It just shows that there are adaptations that can be done and accommodations for students with disabilities regarding not just journalism but any field out there," said Hartle.