Crip Material Exploration as an Assistive Technology Research Framework: Situating Interdependence in Empowered Disabled Making

Over the past few decades, assistive technologies have become popular all around the world. In the available literature, there is still a gap in systematically reviewing the categories of assistive technology for the elderly concerning its application and intended outcome. This study, therefore, aims to analyze the progress of academic research in assistive technology for the elderly in the past two decades using a systematic literature review. In this paper, a generic data analysis is carried out based on keywords, subject area, relevant journals, and conferences, and specific analysis is done to illustrate the research questions. The technology used and application areas of existing assistive technologies are explored. The study reveals 16 broad categories of assistive technologies for the elderly with 37 specific technologies. Design considerations play a vital role in the effective use of assistive technology and hence an effort is made to identify them. Further 112 academic articles that discussed these technologies were reviewed for intended outcome analysis. The study is unique as it gives a comprehensive listing of assistive technologies and their intended outcome. The results are summarized based on the current status and proposed future research directions and research agenda.

Teams engaging in assistive technology research should include expertise in the domain of disability itself, in addition to other areas of expertise that are more typical in human–computer interaction (HCI) research, such as computer science and psychology. However, unexpected problems can arise when HCI researchers do not adequately plan the involvement of domain experts in a research project. Although many research teams have included domain experts when designing assistive technologies, there has been little work published on how to best involve these experts in the research process. This paper is a first step towards filling that void. Based on the authors’ own experiences involving domain experts in research, as well as those documented in the literature, five types of domain experts and three broad roles that domain experts can play are identified, and five guidelines for their involvement are presented. This analysis will be useful to anyone in the assistive technology and universal accessibility communities, especially those who are in the early stages of conducting research in this area. It is intended to lay the foundation of best practices for involving domain experts in assistive technology research.

The paper focuses on the topic of assistive technologies in the frame of biomedical engineering education. In general, there are quite interesting research projects in assistive technologies and ambient assisted living. However, it seems that proper understanding and education in this complex area is still insufficient. It is definitely broader than biomedical or clinical engineering, since it touches not only health state of a person, but also his/her social status, inclusion in the society, etc. At the same time, this area is attractive and challenging for students, in particular as part of the project based education and also application oriented education. Since universities support education of students with special needs, we see this fact as a great opportunity for inviting them as participants in the student project teams. We show that direct involvement of these students in development of new project topics and research in assistive technologies is useful and advantageous.

Assistive technology (AT) plays a pivotal role in the lives of people who require assistance with one or more aspects of daily living. Ranging from simple devices such as an augmented fork to complex devices like a power wheelchair with integrated environmental control, AT is a broad term to describe a range of products and services that provide assistance. Historically used in the "disability sector", in recent years AT devices have merged into the ageing sector as more Australians develop an impairment through "age-related disability", creating a larger market for equipment that provides independence or restores lost/reduced functionality. Despite the national focus on ageing, Australia lacks a nationally coordinated and cohesive AT sector - most AT equipment and devices are imported and the sector struggles for local research, development, and commercialisation funding. In an attempt to address this issue, a network of rehabilitation engineering and AT centres, universities, and industry players formed a collaboration to submit a Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) proposal to drive Australian AT products and services. The main focus was on developing Australian capacity within the sector and creating innovative products that met Australian needs, leading to import replacement. A secondary focus was on providing a national education program to provide ongoing AT training and development across multiple disciplines associated with both disability and ageing.

Purpose. To identify gaps in assistive technology (AT) research and solutions, with a focus on wheeled mobility.Methods. Literature review.Results. AT researchers have identified a need to move beyond determining whether a device works well in the laboratory or is perceived favorably by users. The vital next step in AT research is to determine the effects of AT when used for day-to-day activities by typical consumers. Four challenges affect AT research on everyday mobility:the heterogeneity of the population using AT, the environments in which AT is used, and the devices themselves;the dependency of empirical research on objective data for valid causal inference;the need for detailed information to capture the interaction between the person, the device, and the environment in which it is used; andthe extent to which success or failure of AT is dependent on the personal perspectives of the individual using the device. These challenges are being addressed by AT researchers through use of new measures, novel data collection methods, and by linking quantitative with qualitative data.Conclusions. AT researchers are adapting traditional research designs and analytic methods to examine that effects of AT on everyday life.

Background Despite the rapid proliferation and emphasis on technology, the use of assistive technology among individuals with varying disabilities and age is different. This situation instigates the need for a systematic review to gain a realistic understanding of prominent issues, research trends and assistive technology applications with minimal bias. Objective Identification of leading researchers and prominent publications in assistive technologies. Subsequently, semantic relation between qualitative and quantitative research literature on assistive technologies was explored to future research directions. Methods A manual search across reputed research databases was done to find out relevant literature from January 2005 to April 2020. In this paper, latent semantic analysis (LSA) was done to develop an information model for achieving defined objectives. Results A corpus of 367 research papers published during 2005–2020 was processed using LSA. Term frequency, inverse document frequency of high loading terms provided five major topic solutions. Marcia Scherer, Rory Cooper and Stefano Federici are most noticed authors in assistive technology research. “Smart Assistive Technologies” and “Wearable Technologies for Rehabilitation” came out as contemporary research trends within assistive technologies. Conclusions The manuscript concludes the fact that assistive technologies for rehabilitation are experiencing a transition from standalone mechanical devices towards smart, wearable and connected devices. Implications for Rehabilitation Customized assistive devices could be programmed for multiple uses. User data privacy and internet dependency of smart assistive technologies must be taken care of while designing smart assistive devices for rehabilitation. Fog devices could eliminate the latency issues associated with cloud-based rehabilitation services.

Assistive technology (AT) research has historically focused on skills that AT features can support (e.g. increased spelling, increased typing speed, etc.). In contrast, new research has examined the impact of AT on occupational engagement for individuals with disabilities, and AT in higher education with varying supports (Camarena et al., 2020; Gameuda et al., 2018; Malcolm & Roll, 2017). Due to the COVID pandemic, distance teaching/learning technology has become central to higher education (HE). Distance learning has caused uncertainties for students including creating an effective study routine (Peloso, et al., 2020). Further research is required for examining AT that can support self-regulation, time management, and academic skills. This research is a continued collaboration with Brain Education Strategies Technology (BEST), to empirically examine the use of AT including the BEST Suite© of apps (self-regulation, to do lists, and time management strategies) and Notability© (a dynamic note taking app), for HE students with and without disabilities. This research will emphasize an occupation centered lens examining the use of AT with an emphasis on distance learning due to COVID-19. This research employs mixed methods, (1) custom designed pre/post measures (quantitative descriptive data) and (2) structured interviews (qualitative analysis, constant comparison method, Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to examine the lived experiences and occupational impact from those using the AT. Participants in the 2021 research arm are 16 undergraduate students (n=16) from Dominican University of California (n=15 women, n=1 man, n=2 self-identify with disability). Our results indicate how an individual and occupation-centered approach to AT in HE can benefit students as demonstrated by their lived experiences and reported performance and satisfaction. Our findings provide preliminary evidence in support of adding OT/AT expertise as part of the current mentoring and coaching models employed in HE. This research has been funded by Dominican University, School of Health and Natural Sciences, Summer 2018 and 2019 Competitive Research Grants. This funding provides free software for all enrolled participants.

This paper presents a systematic mapping study based on literature and industrial survey related to assistive technologies for people with dementia. The world population of the ageing people is increasing both in developed and developing countries, so does the number of people with dementia. Consequently assistive technologies are getting much importance from academic researchers and industry as an aid for people with dementia. Assistive technologies are helping people with dementia to perform activities which otherwise are not possible for them without external help. Systematic mapping studies are popular in other fields like software engineering, yet this methodology is mostly ignored in assistive technology research. Literature survey indicates that there is no systematic mapping study conducted so far on assistive technologies for people with dementia. Thus, we are motivated to conduct this systematic mapping study on assistive technologies for people with dementia. As per the study nature, we carried out a thorough literature and industrial survey. The results indicates that current available assistive technologies can be classified into five major types i.e. robotics, health monitoring, prompts and reminders, communication and software. There is rich literature available on first three categories while communication and software based assistive technologies need more attention, whereas the industrial focus is mostly on health monitoring and software based assistive technologies. The mapping study results emphasize the need for industry to invest more efforts in communication and software based assistive technologies.

This study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of assistive technology (AT) research development by investigating relationships between related keywords and concepts and uncovering how trends change over time. This study employed network analysis to identify the relationships between frequently cited papers and keywords in the AT literature and concept-linking analysis to uncover the key concepts and classifies them into clusters determining the changing trends in AT research. The network analysis results on author keywords co-occurrence and citation indicate that the development trend of AT is primarily observed in medicine and is related to medical devices used in rehabilitation or available for disabled and people for well-being improvement. Meanwhile, the concept linking analysis identifies seven groups of key AT concepts, including technical issues, education, health and disability, policy, user/people, and ways/medium. We also depict the yearly changes of the key concepts in AT research development. This research extracts the strongest key concepts, the most productive authors and countries, and the connecting relationship between authors and literature within the big data. It provides a comprehensive view of temporal patterns of AT developments and their development in terms of human–computer interactions.

Economic evaluation has become one of the principal methodologies in outcomes research within the health care field in general and specifically in assistive technology. Efforts to define and develop a consistent methodology for assistive technology economic evaluations have been hampered by lack of familiarity with the various terms and concepts associated with cost analysis, an essential aspect of economic evaluations. Adapting these concepts, which were constructed to suit a medical model, to the needs of the assistive technology field has been a challenge as well. This article outlines terms and concepts basic to cost analysis. The authors then consider five studies that relate costs to outcomes in order to illustrate the challenges, choices, and trade-offs researchers make when adapting this methodology to assistive technology. The article concludes by seeking to stimulate further discussion of the complexity inherent in assessing costs in assistive technology outcomes research and calling for the development of a standardized and consistent economic evaluation methodology.

Digital technologies have created new forms of reading and writing and have altered our conceptions of literacy. However, digital technologies also offer new ways of assisting readers who have various difficulties reading and comprehending conventional texts. Use of the capabilities of digital technologies specifically to broaden access to textual information among such readers has come to be known as assistive technologies, the topic of this installment of RRQ's New Directions in Research.Research and development in this area have been ongoing since the early days of instructional computing. During the previous decade, however, interest in this aspect of the digital revolution has expanded considerably, due in part to the increasing availability of sophisticated digital technologies. Interest in assitive technologies has also expanded in response to U.S. federal laws requiring publishers to make the content of textbooks accessible to students with a variety of disabilities. Currently, there is also a federally funded center aimed at researching how digital technologies can provide textual supports aimed at increasing comprehension and learning among readers with disabilities. Thus, we believe that considering the topic of assistive technologies is particularly timely and important. The contributros, whose individual pieces follow, have diverse backgrounds, orientations, and experiences that position them well to identify the issues that define the current and needed research agenda related to assistive technologies.[This New Directions in Research collection includes “The role of instructional design in assistive technology research and development,” Randall Boone and Kyle Higgins (http:dx.doi.org10.1598RRQ.42.1.5) “Assistive technology in the reading clinic: Its emerging potential,” Michael C. McKenna and Sharon Walpole (http:dx.doi.org10.1598RRQ.42.1.6) “Technology‐enhanced reading performance: Defining a research agenda,” Dave L. Edyburn (http:dx.doi.org10.1598RRQ.42.1.7) “Supported eText: Assistive technology through text transformations,” Lynne Anderson‐Inman and Mark A. Horney (http:dx.doi.org10.1598RRQ.42.1.8)]

Research in assistive technology has been on the rise over the last decade. Numerous solutions and consumer products have flooded the market to guide visually impaired making use of beacon technology, depth cameras and many more. Though certain products and solutions are available for highly structured and regular indoor environments, we are still a long way from an industrial level product for unstructured, dynamic and irregular outdoor environments. Our work harnesses the decision making power of sighted individuals and crowd as a group surrounding the visually impaired. This information extraction from the crowd along with coarse terrain mapping of major obstacles like footpath edges, walls and large pot holes will help the subject to navigate dynamic and irregular environments. This out of the box approach provides us the margin to use low grade equipment and develop algorithms with low computational complexity. The paper explains the theoretical aspects of this approach along with its proof of concept and some remarkable results achieved in real life implementation.

In an initial user study, three motor-impaired musicians---a composer with a degenerative motor neuron disease, a guitarist who suffered a stroke, and a first-year college student with impaired finger movement---identified prospective areas of research in assistive technology. Participants in the study made use of a range of technologies to adapt conventional software to their needs, and identified practical limitations and challenges in those adaptations, including suggestions for novel and intuitive interfaces, optimized control-surface layouts, and repurposing opportunities in text-input techniques.

Outcomes, assessment, and research in assistive technology

Better together: Promoting interdisciplinary research in assistive technology