Prosthetic technology has come a long way. The stories we tell about these devices still have a ways to go.
By Anna Johannes
The first time I went to a prosthetic fitting, I was in third grade. I was born without my left hand and forearm, and honestly, I could get around just fine without a prosthetic. But from early on, there was no shortage of people without disabilities telling me I should wear one, whether to blend in cosmetically with society or because they were convinced it would make my life easier. So there I was.
Like most kids with disabilities, I had already started to diverge from my peers by having more doctor’s appointments, more fittings, more time in waiting rooms that smelled like antiseptic instead of whatever normal childhood smelled like. That alone has a way of making you feel your differences more acutely. But then you go through the actual process of choosing your life-changing device, and the experience manages to deepen that feeling further. You’re in a medical building, flipping through a catalog that looks more like a supply manual than anything that reflects your self-image. Bedpans in one section, prosthetic hand attachments in the next. Items are presented according to their clinical function, not according to who you are or who you’re becoming. Nobody sits with you to understand what your body is capable of, how you want to grow, or what future a new device might unlock for you. They hand you a pamphlet and point at options, and you leave with recommendations from someone whose life experience is completely different from your own.
I’m now going through the process of getting a new prosthesis as an adult. The difference between that little girl flipping through a booklet of cosmetic options designed to cover up her disability, and the adult who now has choices made by people like her, is something genuinely wonderful to witness. The fitting process itself has changed: Rather than being handed a device and told how to use it, I now take part in a mutual, collaborative, and human conversation.
But one of the most significant shifts isn’t just in how prosthetics are fitted. It’s in how they’re portrayed to the people who are actually going to use them.
Some of the biggest prosthetic distributors still operate squarely within the medical model of disability: patients to be treated, conditions to be managed, products to be dispensed. For decades, the industry has introduced products via trifold brochures and clinical catalogs depicting disembodied limbs on a white background. But a growing cohort of companies is proving there are other, more appealing ways to market prosthetic devices. And most of these firms share something important: They are led by people with disabilities, built from lived experience, and center their marketing around the person, not the diagnosis. The technological innovation in assistive tech right now is genuinely astounding. But the products themselves aren’t what stand out to me the most; it’s how they’re presented. As more people with disabilities gain access to these products, demand for them grows, and so does the feedback loop between the community and the companies serving them.
Three Brands Getting It Right
Here are three prime examples of what happens when products are made by and marketed to people with lived experience of disability:
Koalaa, a manufacturer of affordable upper-limb prosthetics, is built on the premise that users take the lead in product development. Access is paramount for Koalaa, and every creation is tailor-made for maximum comfort and functionality. Peer-to-peer support is built into the model, so community input isn’t an add-on—it’s part of the infrastructure. And the marketing actually speaks to you. Their promotional materials were the first ones I saw that featured people like me using products in activities I want to try—not posed in clinical settings but living fully and beautifully. The marketing doesn’t talk down, reduce you to a medical case, or make you feel like a condition to be corrected. They’ve even won awards not just for accessible technology but for fashion. Koalaa proves that when you commit to genuinely human-centered design, it pays off across every dimension of a user’s life, not just the clinical one.
Levitate has branding and marketing that’s as edgy and intense as campaigns for the biggest sports companies in the world. Shopping for their products feels like hunting for the latest performance tech drop, not flipping through a pamphlet in a waiting room. Founder Lasse Madsen is an above-knee amputee who grew tired of the financial and functional barriers baked into the industry. He brought ten years of engineering experience to the table, spent two years innovating alongside top engineers from the Technical University of Denmark, and then told Levitate’s story in a way that made other amputees actually want to engage. The result is a brand that feels like it belongs in the same conversation as the biggest names in athletic performance—because it does. The product is elite. The brand knows it. And it communicates that without apology.
By Destiny Pinto is proof that the function-meets-fashion revolution isn’t only for us amps. This company is hitting the disability community with its mission to reimagine medical devices as attractive accessories that people actually want to wear and be seen in. The company grew directly out of the founder’s own experience with compression garments for rheumatoid arthritis and her best friend’s experience navigating life with an ostomy bag due to IBD. Two women, two different conditions, one shared frustration: Why does everything designed to help us make us feel like we need to hide? What started as a personal frustration became a brand that’s expanding what assistive design can look and feel like across the entire disability community—more proof (as if more was needed) that people with disabilities know what the community needs and wants. Because we are the community.
What connects these brands isn’t just good design or sharp branding. It’s that they refuse to reduce the people using their products to a diagnosis or a body part. For too long, assistive technology has been marketed in ways that are objectifying, using clinical language and images that treat users as patients first and people second. The aesthetics of these promotions signal “medical necessity” rather than identity, desire, or joy. Companies like Koalaa, Levitate, and By Destiny Pinto are building a blueprint that large companies would do well to study seriously. Key takeaways:
Treat end users as the full human beings they are.
The medical model may have its place in clinical settings, but it shouldn’t define the entire experience of living with a disability. The person receiving an assistive device isn’t just a patient with a clinical need; they’re someone with a personality, a lifestyle, aesthetic preferences, athletic goals, and a sense of self. Marketing and product design that ignore these values isn’t neutral. It actively damages how people understand their own worth and capability. Just because a doctor or prosthetist may place the order from a medical catalog doesn’t mean that’s what the end user wants to see, has access to, or will identify with.
Center the community as your greatest asset, not just your market.
The companies doing this well aren’t just selling to people with disabilities; they’re built from within the disability community. They hire people with disabilities. They involve users in design and testing. They build peer support into their models. The result is a feedback loop that makes products better and marketing sharper, because the people making decisions actually understand the experience they’re designing for. Lived experience isn’t a nice-to-have option. It’s a necessity—and a huge competitive advantage.
Give your product the same brand attention you’d give any competitive product.
Levitate doesn’t market its prosthetic running blade like it’s a medical device. The product is marketed like first-class lifestyle gear backed by elite engineering. By Destiny Pinto doesn’t market compression garments like a necessary inconvenience; it markets them like wearable, beautifully designed apparel that belongs in the world. When assistive tech companies treat their products as desirable and worth investing in from a brand perspective, they signal to users that those products—and by extension, the people using them—are worth that investment, too.
Keeping the Human at the Center
It’s encouraging to see this evolution, and my hope is that it pushes the entire industry forward—not just in how products are made, but in how people with disabilities are centered in their use. The large distributors and legacy players in this space have the reach and resources to make that shift at scale, and the brands leading this movement are showing them exactly how it’s done. We have to keep humans at the center of disability innovation, not as an afterthought or a niche market to be tapped, but as the starting point.
I think often about the version of me sitting in that waiting room in third grade—the girl with no choices, no mirror in the marketing, and no sense that I deserved great products as much as any nondisabled consumer. I think about how different it might have felt to grow up seeing people who looked like me, living lives like mine, in the marketing for the devices that were supposed to help me thrive. That representation isn’t just a peripheral, feel-good element—it’s a central component that shapes how a person understands what’s possible for them.
The brands getting it right today aren’t just selling better products. They’re telling a better story. They’re telling people that they matter; that their body is worth designing for; that who they are beyond their diagnosis is worth showing up for. And I hope the generation of kids sitting in today’s waiting rooms, flipping through whatever comes after the medical trifold, can find a reflection of themselves—full, capable, and worth designing for from the very start.
That’s not a small thing. That’s everything.
Anna Johannes is a strategic brand consultant and the founder of On the One Hand Consulting. She won a bronze medal in swimming at the 2012 Paralympics.
