Assistive Technology For People Research Articles

Assistive technology for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the United States in Home- and Community-Based Services

Purpose Unmet needs for assistive technology (AT) contribute to health and quality of life disparities among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) [1–4]. The biggest barrier people with IDD face accessing technology is affordability and a lack of funding [1,3–6]. The purpose of this study was to examine how AT were provided to people with IDD in Medicaid Home- and Community-Based Services (HCBS) in the United States, the largest funding source for Long-Term Services and Supports for people with IDD. Materials and methods We analysed Medicaid HCBS 1915(c) waivers for people with IDD from across the USA in fiscal year (FY) 2021 using content analysis and descriptive statistics. Results and conclusions In FY2021, 31 states and the District of Columbia provided AT (stand-alone and combined services) through 68 waivers for people with IDD to improve functioning, communication, independence, and community integration. In total, $63.3 million was projected for the AT services for 23,753 people with IDD. Average spending per person on AT services was $2,663. We found significant variability in terms of how states allocated AT to people with IDD in their HCBS programs. Not only were less than 3% of people with IDD with HCBS projected to receive assistive technology services, there was also large variance across services and states. Assistive technology promotes the health, safety, quality of life, independence, and community integration of people with IDD – they align with the very aims of HCBS, and thus, should be expanded.

VOICE ASSISTANT FOR PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED INDIVIDUALS: ENHANCING ACCESSIBILITY AND INDEPENDENCE

This research paper explores the application of voice assistants in improving accessibility and independence for physically challenged individuals. The objective is to investigate the benefits and challenges of utilizing voice assistants as assistive technology for people with physical disabilities. The study examines the current state of voice assistant technology, explores its potential applications, and discusses the impact it can have on the lives of physically challenged individuals. Furthermore, the paper highlights the specific needs and requirements of this user group and proposes potential enhancements and adaptations to existing voice assistant platforms. The research draws upon existing literature, case studies, and user feedback to provide insights into the effectiveness and usability of voice assistants for this target audience. The findings of this study contribute to the ongoing efforts to create inclusive technology solutions that empower physically challenged individuals to overcome barriers and engage more fully in daily activities.

The acceptance and attitudes towards using assistive technology for people with stroke in Jordan: caregivers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to evaluate the acceptance and attitudes toward assistive technology (AT) for people with stroke from their caregivers’ perspectives in Jordan. Also, this study further validates the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) questionnaire. This is a cross-sectional study that includes a three-sections survey: the first section contains demographic data, the second section includes the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) questionnaire, and the third section consists of two optional open-ended questions. Among 123 caregivers of people with stroke over 18 years of age who participated in this study, 23% were male. The findings indicate a moderate to high acceptance of using AT for stroke survivors, confirm the validity and reliability of the UTAUT questionnaire, and clarify novel issues regarding AT based on the caregivers’ perspectives.

A holistic understanding of challenges faced by people with low vision

Prior research on visual impairments has documented specific challenges that people with low vision face such as reading and mobility. Yet, much less focus has been given to the relationships between seemingly separate challenges such as mobility and social interactions; limiting the potential of services and assistive technologies for people with low vision. To address this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 low vision participants and examined the relationships between challenges and coping strategies overarching three facets of life – functional, psychological, and social. We found that challenges in a specific area of life commonly interacted and impacted other facets of life and provide a conceptual map of these relationship. For example, challenges in mobility reduced social interactions, which in turn affected the psychological well-being. Moreover, participants repeatedly described how a seemingly specific functional challenge (i.e., seeing under different lighting conditions) influenced a wide range of activities, from mobility (e.g., seeing obstacles) to social interactions (e.g., seeing faces and interpreting non-verbal cues). Our results highlight the importance of considering the interrelationships between different facets of life for assistive technology development and evaluation.

Experimental Evaluation of EMKEY: An Assistive Technology for People with Upper Limb Disabilities.

Assistive technology can help people with disabilities to use computers more effectively and can enable them to access the same information and resources as people without disabilities. To obtain more insight into the factors that can bring about the design of an Emulator of Mouse and Keyboard (EMKEY) to higher levels of user satisfaction, an experimental study was conducted in order to analyse its effectiveness and efficiency. The experimental study involved 27 participants (Mage = 20.81, SD = 1.14) who performed three experimental games under different conditions (using the mouse and using EMKEY with head movements and voice commands). According to the results, the use of EMKEY allowed for the successful performance of tasks such as matching stimuli (F(2,78) = 2.39, p = 0.10, η2 = 0.06). However, the execution times of a task were found to be higher when using the emulator to drag an object on the screen (t(52,1) = -18.45, p ≤ 0.001, d = 9.60). These results indicate the effectiveness of technological development for people with upper limb disabilities; however, there is room for improvement in terms of efficiency. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research and are based on future studies aimed at improving the operation of the EMKEY emulator.

Augmented reality: a view to future visual supports for people with disability

Background : Augmented reality (AR) technologies may provide immersive visual supports that foster active user engagement in activities. However, there is little research examining the use of AR as a visual support to guide its use in research or therapy settings. Aims : To investigate the development and use of AR for delivering visual supports in an immersive environment, using the Microsoft® HoloLens2® and Microsoft® Dynamics 365 Guides® software. Method : In a duo-ethnography, two speech-language pathologists who were novice users of the HoloLens2®, examined the affordances of the device for potential use in future research with people with neurodevelopmental disability. In a proof-of-concept study, an AR application was designed by the first author and used by two researchers in a duo-ethnography. The first and second author tested the AR guide and reflected on opportunities and barriers to further use of AR technology, specifically the HoloLens2®, to support people with disability to participate and be included in meaningful activities. Results : The guide created provided situated visual instructions, video models, and holographic symbols to direct the second author in making of a cup of tea. While a moderate level of technological literacy was needed to establish and install a guide, effective use could be established with minimal training. Discussion & conclusions : AR guides offer a situated and integrated means of providing visual support to people with disabilities. This proof-of-concept study justifies further testing and evaluation of AR as an assistive technology for people with neurodevelopmental disability. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION Emerging immersive Augmented Reality technology provides new opportunities to create integrated visual supports that function within the user’s environment to enable active participation in activities and interactions. Visual supports integrated with the user’s environment may better support people with disability to actively engage and attend to objects and to their communication partners. While new and emerging technologies like Augmented Reality are largely untested for disability support, they offer opportunities to enable participation in independent activities.

VizWiz grand challenge workshop at CVPR 2022

Our goal is to educate a broader population about the technological needs and interests of people with vision impairments while encouraging artificial intelligence (AI) researchers to develop new algorithms that can help eliminate accessibility barriers. Towards this goal, we organised the VizWiz Grand Challenge Workshop at the IEEE/CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference (CVPR 2022). This workshop's scope included charting and celebrating progress on accessibility-related AI challenges as well as engaging invited speakers and stakeholders to discuss challenges and opportunities related to designing next-generation assistive technologies. A total of 72 teams participated in our three AI challenges and the winners received awards sponsored by Microsoft. The facilitated discussions highlighted insights from ten invited speakers who provided a range of expertise spanning the cutting edge of computer vision research, development of industry products and services for assisting people with vision impairments, and perspectives of people with vision impairments who use visual assistance technologies. Finally, nine teams who submitted extended abstracts about their research related to the AI challenges and assistive technologies for people with visual impairments gave spotlight and poster presentations about their research. Links to the content shared at the event can be found at VizWiz Workshop

Assistive technology for people with deafblindness in Southern Africa: a Delphi study exploring dimensions of impact

Purpose Assistive technology (AT) is a highly effective intervention to address the capability gap for people living with deafblindness. The My AT Outcomes Framework (MyATOF) is a novel Australian framework founded upon AT process principles and outcomes research. It guides stakeholders to articulate AT use according to 6 dimensions. MyATOF was developed as a data collection and knowledge translation tool. The use case of AT by people with deafblindness in Southern Africa was investigated in this study to determine the applicability of MyATOF dimensions to (a) people with deafblindness and (b) low- and middle-income countries. Materials and methods Two online surveys, using the Delphi methodology, were undertaken with key stakeholders including people with deafblindness, family members, researchers, service providers, educators and advocates. An expert panel of 17 completed Phase 1, with 14 completing Phase 2. The WHO 5 Ps AT systems thinking model was used in data analysis. Results Respondents affirmed the validity of the dimensions of MyATOF for people with deafblindness in four Southern African countries. In-country barriers and constraints were identified as significantly impacting the capacity of AT users with deafblindness, to realize positive outcomes. Conclusions The MyATOF dimensions show promise in their use with persons with deafblindness in Southern Africa, though further research is needed. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION The impact of assistive technology and related supports can be evaluated across a number of dimensions including human rights, costs incurred and saved, consumer experience, and service delivery satisfaction. These dimensions of impact resonate across the two continents investigated to date, with contextual factors being considered. Variables influencing access to assistive technology across contexts can be understood through the WHO GATE five P’s systems thinking model. Few tools place data capture and outcomes measurement in the hands of assistive technology users, but indications are that this is of value to consumers.

Influencing health behaviour using smart building interventions for people with dementia and mild cognitive impairment: expert interviews and a systematic literature review

Purpose Behaviour can have an influence on (coping with) chronic conditions such as dementia. Assistive technology can stimulate the daily behaviour of people with dementia, but the mechanisms through which this happens are unclear. Therefore, this paper focuses on potential behaviour change mechanisms, that can be employed in smart building interventions for people with dementia or MCI. Methods This research uses expert interviews with medical experts (n = 9) and a systematic literature review of smart building interventions stimulating health behaviour (n = 12). Results Results show how facilitation, incentive motivation (i.e., feedback), observational learning and self-efficacy are most promising according to medical experts; if they are appropriately personalised towards needs, preferences as well as abilities. The literature review shows how most of the examined research uses facilitation and incentive motivation to stimulate behaviour. Although positive results are reported in all studies, methodological quality could be improved. Conclusion For the design of smart building interventions for people with MCI or dementia, facilitation and incentive motivation seem to be promising behaviour change mechanisms. Outcome expectation, observational learning and self-efficacy could reinforcing the aforementioned mechanisms. Future research should focus on how different (environmental, digital) cues can be personalized and can adapt over time, as dementia progresses. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION Assistive technology for people with dementia can have an effect on (health) behaviour, which may in turn influence coping strategies or quality of life. Behaviour change mechanisms can inform the design of assistive technology such as smart building interventions. Facilitation, Incentive Motivation, Observational Learning and Self-efficacy seem promising behaviour change mechanisms for people with dementia or MCI. In any intervention for people with dementia, personalized and adaptable cues are of vital importance.

Designing for Independence for People with Visual Impairments

The notion of "independence'' is frequently used to motivate technology design in the HCI sub-field of accessible and assistive technology for people with disabilities. Despite the term's pervasive use, the literature lacks a recent articulation of its meaning in the context of assistive technology. What does independence really mean? Scoping the study to people with visual impairments (PVI), we posed this question to 10 individuals from diverse backgrounds through in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Our findings reveal that PVI have internal experiences of independence and social experiences of independence, with surprising insights into the roles that people and technology play in supporting independence. We also discuss new ways to design for independence.

Computer Vision applied to improve interaction and communication of people with motor disabilities: A systematic mapping

BACKGROUND: The use of computers as a communication tool by people with disabilities can serve as an alternative effective to promote social interactions and the more inclusive and active participation of people in society. OBJECTIVE: This paper presents a systematic mapping of the literature that provides a survey of scientific contributions where Computer Vision is applied to enable users with motor and speech impairments to access computers easily, allowing them to exert their communicative abilities. METHODS: The mapping was conducted employing searches that identified 221 potentially eligible scientific articles published between 2009 and 2019, indexed by ACM, IEEE, Science Direct, and Springer databases. RESULTS: From the retrieved papers, 33 were selected and categorized into themes of this research interest: Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Machine Interaction, Human-Robot Interaction, Recreation, and surveys. Most of the chosen studies use sets of predefined gestures, low-cost cameras, and tracking a specific body region for gestural interaction. CONCLUSION: The results offer an overview of the Computer Vision techniques used in applied research on Assistive Technology for people with motor and speech disabilities, pointing out opportunities and challenges in this research domain.

Multi-view representation based speech assisted system for people with neurological disorders

Ambient assisted living technology makes use of smart devices to enhance the well-being of elder or disabled persons in their daily life. Assistive technology for people with neurological disorders gains importance and is a challenging task. Developing an intelligent speech assistive system for such patients is a kind of rehabilitation to improve their quality of life. One kind of neurological disorder is dysarthria, a motor speech impairment which causes articulatory deficits. People with speech impairment have difficulty in pronouncing words, which results in variations in phonemes, leading to speech impairment. To capture these variations effectively from impaired speech utterances, we propose a multi-view representation based disordered speech recognition system. Auditory images generated for the impaired speech utterances of different word classes are well discriminative in nature. Multi-view representations are formed using the auditory image-based features and cepstral features. The proposed multi-view representations provide better discrimination for acoustically similar but different word classes. The proposed approach is evaluated using the UA-SPEECH corpus with two different datasets, namely 100 common words and 15-word classes of acoustically similar pairs of words. The training and testing samples are collected at varied intelligibility levels such as high, medium, low, and very low. Compared with conventional hidden Markov models (HMM), deep neural network-HMM, constant-Q-transform (CQT) and other single view auditory image-based approaches, the proposed approach proves that even the very low intelligibility words are recognized properly, leading to improved performance of disordered speech recognition.

Assistive Technology for People with Special Needs and Its Role in Enriching Arabic Grammar and Quranic Studies-Abd Allah Ibn Al-Husayn Ukbari as a Model

Assistive technology has an important role in helping people with disabilities, so what this technology can offer goes beyond simple help limits, is that it opens up broad prospects for a new lifestyle. Those with special needs have high concerns, strong wills, solid intentions and creative minds, which Allah Almighty blessed them to encourage and satisfy their hearts. In the context of preface of the book “Nakt al-Humyān fī Nukat al-Umyān, (biographies of notable blind people, with a section on the causes of blindness).” Its writer Khalīl ibn Aybak al-afadī (1296–1363) pointed out a saying, which has high value, deep impact, and significance tribute to people with special needs, where he said: “it's rare to see a blind man being a dull, inefficient, inactive but blind person only can be found as an intelligent, smart and genius. “This research's title is “Assistive Technology for People with Special Needs and its Role in enriching Arabic Grammar and Qur'anic Studies (Abd All āh ibn al-usayn ‘Ukbarī as a model).” We will address issues of people with special needs specially Abd Allāh ibn al-Husayn ‘Ukbarī as a model as he was blinded in his youth as he was hit by chickenpox. The research seeks to discuss the saying: “Although Al-‘Ukbarī was a handicapped person, but he had outstanding efforts and contributions in enriching Arabic grammar and Quranic studies.” It (research) aims to explain the concept of assistive technology and people with special needs, also to know our duty towards them and to mention the most important and preferred effects of Al-‘Ukbarī. As well as clarifying the most prominent features of Al-‘Ukbarī's curriculum in his grammatical works and highlighting his efforts in enriching Arabic grammar and Quranic studies.

「障害者・高齢者・マイノリティ支援と人間拡張」特集号刊行にあたって

「障害者・高齢者・マイノリティ支援と人間拡張」特集号刊行にあたって

Laying the Groundwork for Intra-Robotic-Natural Limb Coordination

Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRLs) have been successfully applied in bracing and as an assistive technology for people with disabilities. These tasks only require perception internal to the SRL-human system. However, SRLs show promise in applications requiring external perception such as opening a door when one’s hands are full. One path toward developing SRLs that accomplish these tasks is to use human-in-the-loop control, thus leveraging the human’s superior perception system to help the SRLs. However, the effects on the user of controlling additional limbs are unclear. This article presents an experimental study where humans, wearing two single degree of freedom SRLs, were instructed to minimize the position error between the subject’s natural and robotic limbs and the corresponding targets, one for each limb. First, subjects performed worse with their natural limbs when asked to perform the task with two natural and two robotic limbs as opposed to with just their natural limbs, suggesting that shared control could help. Second, subjects moved their natural limbs together followed by moving their SRLs together. This informs both the choice of control scheme for the SRLs and the division of labor within a task. Third, subjects showed significant concurrent use of the natural and robotic limbs.

Assistive technology for people with PIMD in challenging scenarios

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine in what type of scenarios of daily life assistive technology such as the INSENSION system would provide considerable benefit for people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD).Design/methodology/approachA series of focus group workshops were held with relatives of people with PIMD and direct support professionals (DSPs), as well as experts in information and communications technology (ICT). They were oriented towards the design thinking approach and moderated as per the Disney method.FindingsThe participants identified transitions from known to unknown caregivers, provision of care during the night and the impact of external factors on a person’s mood as challenging situations within the PIMD context.Practical implicationsSolving these problems would lead to considerable benefits to the affected people. Based on the ideas gathered in workshops, three technological applications for the INSENSION system were derived, i.e. communication application, multimedia player and smart room devices, all of which will provide remedies in specific usage scenarios.Originality/valueMethods drawing on the participant’s creativity in combination with the workshops’ multi-perspectivity facilitated a direct reference to the daily life of the target group. In this manner, the innovative ICT system INSENSION can be oriented towards the requirements of this vulnerable group.

A Saliency-driven Video Magnifier for People with Low Vision.

Consuming video content poses significant challenges for many screen magnifier users, which is the "go to" assistive technology for people with low vision. While screen magnifier software could be used to achieve a zoom factor that would make the content of the video visible to low-vision users, it is oftentimes a major challenge for these users to navigate through videos. Towards making videos more accessible for low-vision users, we have developed the SViM video magnifier system [6]. Specifically, SViM consists of three different magnifier interfaces with easy-to-use means of interactions. All three interfaces are driven by visual saliency as a guided signal, which provides a quantification of interestingness at the pixel-level. Saliency information, which is provided as a heatmap is then processed to obtain distinct regions of interest. These regions of interests are tracked over time and displayed using an easy-to-use interface. We present a description of our overall design and interfaces.

Text Extraction and Recognition in Natural Scene Images using Contourlet Transform and PNN

Of late, the rapid development in the technology and multimedia capability in digital cameras and mobile devices has led to ever increasing number of images or multi-media data to the digital world. Particularly, in natural scene images, the text content provides explicit information to understand the semantics of images. Therefore, a system developed for extracting and recognizing texts accurately from natural scene images, in real-time, has significant relevance to numerous applications such as, assistive technology for people with vision impairment, tourist with language barrier, vehicle number plate detection, street signs, advertisement bill boards, robotics, etc. The extraction of the texts from natural scene images is a formidable task due to large variations in character fonts, styles, sizes, text orientations, presence of complex backgrounds and varying light conditions. The main focus of this research paper is to propose a novel hybrid approach for automatic detection, localization, extraction and recognition of text in natural scene images with cluttered background. Firstly, image regions with text are detected using edge features (GLCM) extracted from Contourlet transformed image and SVM (Support Vector Machine) classifier. Secondly, horizontal projection is applied on text regions for segmenting lines and vertical projection is applied on each text line for segmenting characters. The proposed method for text extraction has produced the precision, recall, F-Score and accuracy of 98.50%, 90.85.62%, 95.00%, and 89.90%, respectively. And, these results prove that the proposed method is efficient. Further, the so extracted characters are processed for recognition using contourlet transform and Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) classifier. The computed features are moment invariants. Only the English script is considered for the experimentation. The proposed character recognition method has accuracy of 79.07%, which is higher in comparison to accuracy of 75.15% obtained by KNN (K-Nearest Neighbors) classifier

Survey on assistive technologies for people with Dementia

Today, in developed societies, life expectancy is noticeably increasing due to improved healthcare systems and medical advances. Along with a longer aging period, falling birth rates, and other concomitant social factors, the age distribution is evidencing a shift towards the demographic expansion of older population stages. Epidemiological studies about this demographic aging distribution of the world population indicate that older adults are experiencing a variety of age-related problems, including Dementia. Dementia is overwhelming and frightening for both loved persons who live with Dementia, and also their caregivers. The number of people living with Dementia in societies is now rising at an unprecedented rate. Neither decisive treatment, nor effective medicines have been introduced to help society cope with such age associated pathologies. However, one promising alternative to this emerging crisis has been the adoption of Assistive Technologies (AT). Therefore, for this study, a systematic literature review is conducted to provide an overview about recent findings in this field of study and also address some available technologies that have potential application for Dementia sufferers. This work makes a report on existing technologies in the field, thus becoming a survey on existing supportive technologies for People with Dementia (PwD). The findings of this work provide an insight into the types and percentages of suggested technologies for each classification that aim to be useful for those researching the field or who want to know state of the art in this presently relevant domain. Concluding points and discussion are presented subsequently.

Assistive Technologies for People with Visual Impairment in the Nigerian Banking Industry

Assistive Technologies for People with Visual Impairment in the Nigerian Banking Industry