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Hayden Trigg’s reliance on a wheelchair and diagnoses of both spina bifida and cerebral palsymeant the 7-year-old had trouble playing alongside his classmates and two siblings.

But that changed earlier this month when Hayden, of Austin, Texas, cut the ribbon on the wheelchair-accessible tree house of his dreams. The tree house was constructed in his family’s backyard thanks to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the generosity of a local contractor, Austin Tree Houses, etc

 “It’s leveled the playing field for him,” Hayden’s mom, Adrienne Trigg, told ABC News of the tree house that was built between 200-year-old oak trees on the family’s one-acre property. “He goes outside but cannot play, but that will change this summer.”

Hayden, who has been in a wheelchair his entire life, watched dutifully as the tree house was built in his backyard, with contractors working through the rainy Texas weather to finish it on time.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation

When the final nail was nailed, Hayden’s entire first-grade class rode the school bus to his home to join him in playing for the first time in the tree house.

“It was the best day of his life,” Trigg said. “His wish was to share it with his friends. He’s got to be the most popular kid in school right now.”

Hayden has since been completing his physical therapy treatments in his new tree house instead of the family’s home, according to Trigg. He is also using the tree house’s 65-foot-long wheelchair ramp to break new barriers for himself.

“He has very low muscle tone, so it’s hard for him to go long distances in his manual chair,” Trigg said. “For the very first time, he took the manual chair up and down the ramp because he was so excited.”

She added, “That’s really thrilling to us. We’ve already done a slumber party in the tree house and have scheduled parties this summer.”

HURLEYVILLE — A team of health care professionals and designers at The Center for Discovery want to turn the wheelchair industry on its head — and Google donated a lot of money to help make that happen.

Many of the children and adults who live or get treatment at the Center are not independent enough to drive power wheelchairs regularly, but Damiao wanted a power chair option to be available to anyone.

Increased mobility allows people with disabilities to more fully participate in life, he said.

Damaio teamed up with occupational therapist assistant Jason Kean and Mark McNamara, director of the Center's Hurleyville Makers Lab.

Together with other health care professionals and engineers at the Center and in the Makers Lab, they designed the indieGo, a platform that a person in a manual wheelchair can roll onto, and then control as an adapted power chair.

The indieGo will be cheaper, more manageable and more accessible than traditional power wheelchairs.

After building several prototypes, the indieGo team applied for a Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities grant, and was awarded $1.125 million to help streamline the design and begin to produce and market the device.

There are a lot of problems with the current medical device industry, Damiao said.

Equipment like power chairs are too expensive, bulky and difficult to get covered by insurance, and the technology is proprietary.

“The goal is to build something that turns the present industry on its head,” Damiao said.

The indieGo will be small and light enough that it can be carried up a flight of stairs and fit in the trunk of a car.

It won’t look like a medical device, and the controls for the platform will be designed as an open interface that can be adapted to different disabilities - from a handheld joystick to buttons a person can touch with their head.

For people who cannot walk, having a chair they can move on their own is therapeutic and rehabilitative, Damiao said.

Making sure the indieGo does not look like a typical medical device is important, McNamara said.

He noted that recreational hover boards are sleek, sexy and modern, but no one attempts to design mobility devices in a similar manner.

“It’s a massive gap, and we hope to fill it,” McNamara said.

Their target price for an indieGo is $1,000, compared to the $7,000 cost of an average power chair, and it will be available to order online.

It will not be priced for profit, McNamara said. Any profits will go toward improving the design or developing more projects.

Under the terms of the Google grant, the team will begin a user study within a year, and the indieGo will be on the market in two years.

All plans for the indieGo will be open source, so anyone will be able to access them online and build their own indieGo.