A Muskegon kitchen was built so a wheelchair user can reach the cabinets, start the faucet by voice, and cook in an oven that uses infrared light. Jeffrey Van Dyke, a Muskegon resident who uses a wheelchair, said it was the first kitchen built with someone like him in mind. He called the lab a game changer that could make cooking possible for him, and said the technology could give him more freedom to cook and live more fully.
The room is part of MOKA's Discovery Lab, which FOX 17 reported was still closed to the public on November 12. MOKA plans to open the doors in January. The lab holds more than 100 pieces of technology, paid for through a grant from Impart Alliance, an extension of Michigan State University, and is meant to help people with disabilities sort out which devices might actually make everyday tasks easier at home.
A Kitchen Someone Can Reach
The visible pieces are ordinary jobs, not a gadget wall. Lowering cabinets, voice-activated faucets, and an infrared smart oven sit in a kitchen where Van Dyke said he can reach everything. He also framed the point more broadly: accessibility helps people who are disabled now and people who may become disabled later.
Diane Fleecer, MOKA's director of programs, said the lab is an invitation to explore, learn, play, and be exposed to technology that already exists. She has described that exposure as a way to change how services are delivered and to support independence and dignity for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Greater independence, she said, is associated with better quality of life and health.
MOKA says the same tools can help families and caregivers, not only the person using them. Fleecer said the technology has already benefited individuals and the people who support them. The next practical step is narrower than a slogan: help someone identify a device that fits, then get that technology into a home.
From Kent County Parents to Smart Homes
MOKA began in 1978, when a small group of Kent County parents came together over concern for their children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. That was also a period when people with disabilities were moving out of institutions and back into their communities. The organization now runs the Muskegon lab as the next step in a technology effort FOX 17 described as Michigan's first tech-first push.
That effort started about three years before the November report, with two smart homes in Kent County. MOKA says the results were powerful. A separate FOX 17 report described two MOKA smart homes in the area housing six residents in all.
On its own site, MOKA calls the pilot home the first of its kind in Michigan and places the Smart Home Pilot inside its residential living model. The organization says learning from the pilot could affect up to 2.3 million people with disabilities in Michigan. That figure is MOKA's estimate of the possible reach, not a count of people already using the homes or the lab.
What Five Residents' Skills Showed
A 2025 study looked at assistive technology and independent-living skills in two MOKA pilot homes, one for men and one for women. Five people took part: three women and two men. The research, posted through Grand Valley State University's ScholarWorks, is a small record of those homes. It is not a measured outcome for the Discovery Lab, which had not opened to the public when FOX 17 published.
Within that group, medication management, feeding, and use of adaptive equipment improved for all five participants. Toileting improved for four, and shopping for three. The study concluded that smart technology in homes for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities was associated with higher functional ability as measured by the RTI-E.
Five people cannot settle a statewide argument about technology and care. The pattern is still specific: the gains clustered around daily tasks that usually require another person nearby, and they were not uniform across every skill the researchers tracked.
Funding, Staffing, and a State Gap
The Discovery Lab's device grant and MOKA's earlier smart-home work both trace to Impart Alliance at Michigan State University, though they are not the same project. Michigan Chronicle reported that MOKA received an Impart Alliance grant to demonstrate how smart homes could increase autonomy, independence, and satisfaction in residential support. The dollar amount and full terms of the separate grant that paid for the lab's technology were not reported.
The same Chronicle article said Easterseals MORC had secured a $352,692 Michigan Health Endowment Fund grant to launch a statewide Technology First initiative for people with intellectual disabilities. It also said Technology First had been adopted in some form in 22 states, and that Michigan was one of 13 states without public funding for enabling technology for people with disabilities.
MOKA has tied its own pilot to the workforce problem sitting underneath that funding gap. At its inaugural Compassion in Action event on April 17, 2025, the organization welcomed 150 guests and raised $39,000 for the Smart Home Pilot, Muskegon.org reported. MOKA said the project uses widely available smart technology to expand care capacity and build a career ladder for direct support professionals amid an ongoing shortage in that work.
Try the Device Before It Moves In
Muskegon is not MOKA's only place to look at this equipment. The Possibility Pod, at the organization's office in Wyoming, is laid out as a small home with a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. MOKA says scheduled tours let visitors try person-centered technology meant to support independence, safety, and choice without interrupting the people already living in the smart homes.
The Discovery Lab is aimed one step closer to someone's own address. MOKA plans a lending library so people can check out devices and try them before committing to technology for their homes. Fleecer's invitation to come in and explore depends on that January opening actually happening; as of November 12, the doors were still shut.
Van Dyke's test is simpler than a statewide initiative. If the lowering cabinets and the infrared oven work the way the kitchen was built to work, cooking stops being a task he has to hand off. The lab's value will show up in whether a borrowed device makes that same kind of difference after it leaves Muskegon and goes home with someone.
