Compliance effort on safe laptop for children

A team of enthusiastic UL staff members from the United States, Canada and Taiwan joined hand to make a difference for inadequately educated children around the world. The group assisted on safety assessment and certification for a small, bright green laptop computer called XO — a tool that will help children open the door to a world of ideas and learning.

Designed and built from the ground up through a collaboration of experts from academia and industry, the XO is a durable, low-cost, power-efficient computer that utilizes free and open-source software. Originally dubbed the “US$100 laptop”, the XO can be used as both a traditional laptop or for reading e-books.

Developed by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the XO taps into children’s innate capacities to learn, share and create. The OLPC Foundation envisions giving the nearly 2 billion inadequately educated children the tools to make learning possible to break the cycle of poverty. Fundamentally, the XO is more than simply a technology program: it is intended to give children an opportunity to make the most of their own potential, to be exposed to a world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive community and world.

XO is a durable, low-cost, power-efficient computer that utilizes free and open-source software. (Courtesy: Milke Mcgregor)

OLPC Foundation envisions giving the nearly 2 billion inadequately educated children the XO computers to make learning possible to break the cycle of poverty.

Turning to the compliance experts

When the OLPC team saw the market access challenges posed by introducing a laptop for use by children in dozens of countries around the world, they turned to UL. Since March 2007, a comprehensive UL team has provided guidance and expertise to OLPC on the specific compliance requirements for the different countries targeted for distribution of the laptop. The UL team, composed of staff from Commercial Operations, Conformity Assessment Services, Government Affairs, International Certification, Lab Operations, Research & Development, Restricted Substances, and Primary Designated Engineers in UL offices around the globe, assisted OLPC in a number of ways, including:

	•	Testing and certifying the XO to regional, national and international safety requirements of OLPC’s priority markets.
	•	Using a hazard-based safety engineering approach to assess the safety of the XO when used by children and in regions with extremes in temperature, humidity and other factors that impact product safety.
	•	Providing knowledge and support on compliance and certification requirements for numerous geographies and markets around the globe.
	•	Assessing compliance of the XO to hazardous substance requirements, including the EU’s RoHS Directive.
	•	Regularly visiting manufacturing locations globally to assess continued safety compliance of XOs coming off the production line.

According to Senior Vice President and Public Safety Officer Gus Schaefer, UL’s involvement with One Laptop Per Child and the XO was a natural fit: “We truly see this project as one that was consistent with our mission of working for a safer world and eagerly embraced the opportunity to support OLPC’s objective of providing a safe laptop for learning. The goals of the organization, the focus on children and learning, and the challenge of helping a product get to market that is safe for children to use in vastly different environments made this opportunity a perfect fit for UL’s broad capabilities. It also gives us another way to live our corporate social responsibility goals related to community involvement and youth safety. I could not be prouder of the UL team who stepped up to be part of this effort.”

For more information about UL’s testing and certification of the XO, contact Kathie Sims, Customer Advocacy team at Katherine.M.Sims@us.ul.com.

Photo Courtesy: www.laptop.org (OLPC)