Who we help?
Past members who have enjoyed Steps equipment have been diagnosed with: angelmans syndrome, autism, blindness, cerebral palsy, cognitive delay, deafness, developmental delay, downs syndrome, dyspraxia, epilepsy, fine or gross motor skills, hyper-mobility, microcephaly and rhetts syndrome. The actual condition is not important to us - we just concentrate on how we can help each & every child.
Toy Adaptation
Is there a toy that your child desperately wants but it needs adapting?
Maybe We Can Help!
You can be assured of the safety of our adaptations as all of our toy modifications adhere to EU Toy Safety Law.
Steps To Commerce is a community interest company set up and run by Steps’ personnel to raise money for the charity. We are now offering a toy adaptation service. Now, when Christmas and birthdays come, you can have that ‘must have’ battery-operated toy adapted for your child or young person to keep. In conjunction with Steps’ service, if your youngster falls in love with one of Steps’ loaned toys, no need to risk ‘tears before bedtime’, they can get their own toy adapted!
WHAT TO DO NEXT
Select the toy that you want adapted, note down the name of
the toy and the make
Please don’t send the toy to us straight away. If you chat to us before you buy it; we will have a very good idea if we can adapt it or not and can give you an idea of the approximate cost (we have probably got one in our library!)
If we are both happy to proceed, send us the toy with the quoted fee, along with postage and packing costs (a cheque is fine, made payable to Steps2commerce). Please see estimated prices below.
If there are any unexpected extra costs, we will give you a ring to see if you want to go ahead and you will incur no costs until you agree to proceed
The toy is adapted and sent to the address given
We will repair the toy FREE if it there is an electronic problem with it after adaptation, for 6 months
If the toy is unsuitable for adaptation, we will let you know before returning it to you, free of charge
Please note: when adapting a toy we try to maximise the functions that can be worked by a single switch but, in some instances, there may be reasons why we cannot make all the functions available. We will explain this to you prior to the Adaptation and you can decide how to proceed.
Very occasionally, the toy throws a ‘hissy’ fit and stops working when we try to adapt it. Adaptation is done at your own risk and we do not accept liability for toy replacement. We really do take a great deal of care to get it right and rarely ‘bump off’’ toys
BASIC
ADAPTATION
£30 + P&P
If a toy has one switch, on and off, this is usually a basic adaptation. The switches are usually located in a ‘paw’ or a ‘foot’. Keyhole surgery is done to insert a jack lead into the toy’s circuitry, bypassing the internal switching mechanism, in order that the toy can be activated by an external switch. The toy is then able to be operated by any of Steps’ switches.
INTERMEDIATE
ADAPTATION
£60 + P&P
If you require the toy to be converted
to a radio control toy, or to adapt an existing remote controlled handset, an intermediate adaptation is required.
The adaptation technique is straight-
forward, but time consuming.
COMPLEX
ADAPTATION
circa £120 + P&P
(Multifunction toys)
With a complex adaptation technique, developed by Steps, we can now adapt multifunction toys. Up to 37 functions ,under the control of a single action switch, is now possible. However, the ‘electronics’ (designed by us) and the computer programme we have to write is not cheap, hence the price.
