Assistive Technology: Whats out now and whats in your stores Nicholas Woika Time Magazine, April 2014

Weve all probably heard the term Assistive Technology at some point in our lives, but what does it mean? Even though we may not realize it, not only is it all around us, but for the majority of people living in our modern-day civilized world, technology helps to keep us alive and at a level that is both functioning and independent. Different diseases and conditions progress at different rates, but eventually we all start losing mobility, strength, and/or dexterity. Some of us will need canes, walkers, wheelchairs and even ventilators. Some will need technology that doesnt yet exist. Assistive technology allows increased freedom, improved quality of life and furthers independence. Yet, newer technologies are often expensive, leaving them out of reach for most on disability budgets. So lets examine a few examples of more well-known assistive technologies that can make your life better when you need it, and find out how easily it can become to obtain your own specialized devices.

The Technology Of Today

In today's modern world, one of the most common devices used to assist people has become the ipad, as the tablet has become much more affordable in the last few years. For those with some hand strength and range of mobility, the iPad has an abundance of apps and mounts to adapt the device to your specific abilities.

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iPad: Theres simply too much information to list in this article, but lets go over some quick examples: An iPad can record lectures at school or college, saving you from taking notes. You can upload books to an iPad if physically holding a book is difficult. You can mount it to a wheelchair for use on the go. The standard controls of a game can be more accessible on the large screen of an iPad with its simplistic, touch-based controls. Need to write a report, control your television, turn on your stereo or make a phone call? The iPad provides alternative means of doing all of those tasks and more. In addition, Apple has recently taken several steps at making their devices easier to use for people who may have visual or auditory disabilities.

Voice assistance: When you need a little bit more help physically, the best device you can purchase is one that allows you to use the phone more easily. One such device that can help with this is the Vocally Infinity 3. With this assistive device, you can dial any phone with just your voice. Youll need a phone that youre able to access, such as a switch-enabled phone, speakerphone or headset. To make a call, simply say the name of the person you want to dial and the device does the rest.

PC technology: There are an infinite number of assistive technologies available to help you utilize a personal computer, ultimately making it your best friend. For example, the voice recognition software Dragon Dictation allows you to speak into a microphone and control your PC without ever lifting a finger. The software recognizes voice commands such as clicking on website links, opening programs and preset tasks. Voice recognition has come a long way in the last 10 years. Although the technology has been around since the 1990s, it was slow and often

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inaccurate. Users became frustrated when the software would become unresponsive or start pushing wrong buttons with disastrous results. Today, voice recognition has been integrated into everything from our cars to our phones, and Dragon itself now reaches up to 99 percent accuracy. If talking out loud isnt your preference, consider an on-screen keyboard. A virtual representation of the keyboard is placed onto your screen and functions the same as a normal keyboard. You can click the buttons with the mouse or enable dwell, which pushes the button for you by leaving the pointer over a key for five seconds. Alternatively some keyboards can scan across the keys until the one you want is highlighted. While there are various programs you can install onto most PCs or Macs to enable features like these, Microsoft has actually made much greater efforts to include assistive accommodations in their software, as Windows 8 now has a fairly impressive amount of accessibility additions built directly into the operating system.

Environmental controls: Another crucial ability is operating the environment around you. There are many high-tech and expensive ways to accomplish that goal, but the most costeffective is to purchase a device called a USB-UIRT, which allows you to broadcast infrared (IR) signals (just like your TV remote) from your personal computer. Combined with a program called Girder, the USB-UIRT can learn the IR codes of any remote controlled device. Point your TV, DVD, radio and other remotes to the USB-UIRT, program the codes and operate your entire environment from your PC. Youll be able to use any assistive technology you already use, including eye gaze, to operate your environment. You also can purchase additional IR receiver modules to operate things that arent traditionally remote-controlled, like lights and fans.

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If you can push buttons on a standard universal remote control, Logitech Harmony offers the same ability as the USB-UIRT without requiring a PC.

Wheelchair driving: Perhaps the most vital component to regaining independence is driving your power wheelchair. Up until recently, once you lost the ability to control a joystick there was nothing that could be done. Now there are all kinds of interesting ways you can drive wheelchairs, but the most popular is the ASL mini-proportional joystick. The device uses a thimble-sized joystick that can be operated with a feather-light touch. If you only have millimeters of movement and little strength, youll be able to continue driving with this Medicare-covered device. Moreover, newer models come with a Bluetooth-enabled interface allowing you to operate the mouse on your computer from the same joystick.

Todays Technology, Now In Stores

As I currently work with several people who use various forms of assistive technology through my job, I initially decided to identify as many objects they use in their daily lives that could be considered a form of assistive technology. I planned to categorize the items based on the specific tasks they accomplish, if the items were electronic, and the general difficulty an average person would have obtaining a similar item in the event they needed assistance (or simply broke the device they were currently using). However, as the observations went on, I soon came to realize that there was more to assistive technology than simply having all the appropriate items set in place in a persons home. I was originally under the assumption that the same assistive device would work the same for

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everybody. In reality, I could not be more incorrect with that assumption. It pushed my findings into a completely different direction once I took these new ideas into account.

Implementation While I was conducting my initial investigation, my first step was to identify any items my clients used in any way, shape or form that could be considered assistive technology. After identifying said items, I proceeded to categorize the items based on various criteria about the specific items. For example, I made note of if the device was electronic, and if the items required any modifications in order to increase their general utility for the user. In order to stay organized, I placed each item I identified into a chart that could keep everything organized. Since I was observing while I was working, I proceeded to write these observations over the first week or so without much incident. During this period of time, my findings were honestly very inconsequential, as there was nothing I found that was overly unusual or out of the ordinary. Assistive Technology could be considered anything that is designed to help an individual with a task. Because of this, while a device like a tablet or smartphone could fall in this category, something as simple as a larger pencil that is easier to grip could also be considered assistive technology. While I had a fairly substantial amount of notes, I had decided to come up with a more practical and realistic application to the research, as very little of what I had discovered was particularly interesting. The first attempt I made to re-evaluate my findings was to look at all the notes I previously took and look at the feasibility of which items could be easily acquired by the average consumer. Since I noticed that the majority of items I recorded were not electronic, I wanted to see which items you could buy at a more generalized consumer store. To accomplish this task, I made a shopping list out of every item I previously listed, then proceeded to visit the Walmart in
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State College in an attempt to find as many of the items as I could locate being sold within the store. The reason I chose Wal-Mart out of all the potential stores was due to their ubiquitous nature across the United States, as I wanted to keep my research dedicated to a store most people would have access to. During my research, another interesting event that happened occurred when I noticed that one of the clients I worked with happened to own an electronic speech synthesizer, which was presumably bought for him due to his difficulty communicating verbally. When I asked my supervisor about why this individual does not actually use the synthesizer, she explained that although he owned it and knew how to use it, he refused to use the device without staff prompting him first, presumably because he just did not like the synthesizer. This last comment is out of place here; it does not follow logically from the description of the observations at Walmart.

Results The results of my findings are split up into two parts. The first part is the findings from my original plan of simply recording the devices, and the second part is the shopping list of devices I found at Walmart. After after realizing that assistive technology did not have to be electronic, I made much more of a conscious effort to record everything that the people I observed were using. As such, my original chart I used for recording featured almost a hundred unique items. While there were a handful of electronic items, the large majority of items were fairly standard household items, albeit with modifications. The majority of these modifications were focused on making the existing item larger and easier to grasp in an attempt to make them easier to hold or balance. For example, one client frequently used a special set of silverware with large rubberized handles to
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make it easier to hold. A bathroom of the house also had a toilet seat that was several times thicker than a standard seat in order to allow the user to sit higher, reducing strain on an individual with mobility issues. As my previous research suggested, almost all of these items were simple but effect changes that allowed the individual to move around a little better. With this now fairly comprehensive list, I then proceeded to make a shopping list and find as many of the items at Walmart. Surprisingly, out of roughly 90 unique items on my shopping list, I managed to find about 78 of them after spending several hours in the store. Among the twelve items I was not able to find, only eight of them were items that would most likely have to be obtained from a speciality store of some kind. These items included purchasable wheelchairs (both motorized and nonmotorized), a speech synthesizer, and a specialized wheelchair ramp. While I expected that those items would probably not be sold at a typical superstore, I was very surprised that almost all the non-electronic items I recorded were publicly obtainable without much trouble. In fact, I even managed to find exact copies of some of the items while I was shopping, suggesting that some of these items were purchased at the very walmart I was browsing.

Conclusion I planned on focusing primarily on the actual assistive technology that the people I worked with were using. While my initial research plans were probably enough material to report my findings, I think the most interesting aspects of the research occurred when I decided to break away from what I previously established and attempted to look at the items in different situations. I think the most informative piece of information I got out of the entirety of the research would most likely be the moment when I looked at the voice synthesizer that the one individual
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refused to use. It made me realize that I had forgotten one of the most important aspects of assistive technology in the first place: you could create the most technologically advanced device you can think of, but if the individual is not willing to use them, it does not do them any good. What works for one person is probably not going to work for every person, and sometimes another solution or device needs to be devised. Whenever I plan to do more dedicated work in the field in the form of a more administrative role, one of the most important things I will have to remember is to be prepared to come up with an alternate solution, which based on the assistive devices being sold today, could be something as simple as paying a visit to the local Walmart.

The Future of Assistive Technology

Technology doesnt stand still for long. Well continue to see progressively more advanced technology helping the disabled community. Within the next decade we may have the resources to allow people to bolster themselves with technology and, as we lose abilities through the natural progress of the disease, to replace them with more advanced devices, perhaps even robotic technology that could completely replace damaged or non-functioning limbs. The future looks bright.

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