How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program

A Universalist strategy for the design of Assistive Technology

Assistive Technologies are specialized products aiming to partly compensate for the loss of autonomy experienced by disabled people. Because they address special needs in a highly-segmented market, they are often considered as niche products. To improve their design and make them tend to Universality, we propose the EMFASIS framework (Extended Modularity, Functional Accessibility, and Social Integration Strategy). We first elaborate on how this strategy conciliates niche and Universalist views, which may appear conflicting at first sight. We then present three examples illustrating its application for designing Assistive Technologies: the design of an overbed table, an upper-limb powered orthose and a powered wheelchair. We conclude on the expected outcomes of our strategy for the social integration and participation of disabled people

Smart Kitchens for People with Cognitive Impairments: A Qualitative Study of Design Requirements

Individuals with cognitive impairments currently leverage extensive human resources during their transitions from assisted living to independent living. In Western Europe, many government-supported volunteer organizations provide sheltered living facilities; supervised environments in which people with cognitive impairments collaboratively learn daily living skills. In this paper, we describe communal cooking practices in sheltered living facilities and identify opportunities for supporting these with interactive technology to reduce volunteer workload. We conducted two contextual observations of twelve people with cognitive impairments cooking in sheltered living facilities and supplemented this data through interviews with four employees and volunteers who supervise them. Through thematic analysis, we identified four themes to inform design requirements for communal cooking activities: Work organization, community, supervision, and practicalities. Based on these, we present five design implications for assistive systems in kitchens for people with cognitive deficiencies

Ability-Based Design: Concept, Principles and Examples

Current approaches to accessible computing share a common goal of making technology accessible to users with disabilities. Perhaps because of this goal, they may also share a tendency to centralize disability rather than ability. We present a refinement to these approaches called ability-based design that consists of focusing on ability throughout the design process in an effort to create systems that leverage the full range of human potential. Just as user-centered design shifted the focus of interactive system design from systems to users, ability-based design attempts to shift the focus of accessible design from disability to ability. Although prior approaches to accessible computing may consider users’ abilities to some extent, ability-based design makes ability its central focus. We offer seven ability-based design principles and describe the projects that inspired their formulation. We also present a research agenda for ability-based design.Engineering and Applied Science

Investigating the appropriateness and relevance of mobile web accessibility guidelines

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develop and maintain guidelines for making the web more accessible to people with disabilities. WCAG 2.0 and the MWBP 1.0 are internationally regarded as the industry standard guidelines for web accessibility. Mobile testing sessions conducted by AbilityNet document issues raised by users in a report format, relating issues to guidelines wherever possible. This paper presents the results of a preliminary investigation that examines how effectively and easily these issues can be related by experts to the guidelines provided by WCAG 2.0 and MWBP 1.0. Copyright 2014 ACM

Individual-Technology Fit: Matching Individual Characteristics and Features of Biometric Interface Technologies with Performance

Abstract INDIVIDUAL-TECHNOLOGY FIT: MATCHING INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS AND FEATURES OF BIOMETRIC INTERFACE TECHNOLOGIES WITH PERFORMANCE By ADRIANE B. RANDOLPH MAY 2007 Committee Chair: Dr. Melody Moore Jackson Major Department: Computer Information Systems The term biometric literally means “to measure the body”, and has recently been associated with physiological measures commonly used for personal verification and security applications. In this work, biometric describes physiological measures that may be used for non-muscularly controlled computer applications, such as brain-computer interfaces. Biometric interface technology is generally targeted for users with severe motor disabilities which may last long-term due to illness or injury or short-term due to temporary environmental conditions. Performance with a biometric interface can vary widely across users depending upon many factors ranging from health to experience. Unfortunately, there is no systematic method for pairing users with biometric interface technologies to achieve the best performance. The current methods to accommodate users through trial-and-error result in the loss of valuable time and resources as users sometimes have diminishing abilities or suffer from terminal illnesses. This dissertation presents a framework and methodology that links user characteristics and features of biometric interface technologies with performance, thus expediting the technology-fit process. The contributions include an outline of the underlying components of capturing and representing individual user characteristics and the impact on the performance of basic interaction tasks using a methodology called biometric user profiling. In addition, this work describes a methodology for objectively measuring an individual’s ability to control a specific biometric interface technology such as one based on measures of galvanic skin response or neural activity. Finally, this work incorporates these concepts into a new individual-technology fit framework for biometric interface technologies stemming from literature on task-technology fit. Key words: user profiles, biometric user profiling, biometric interfaces, fit, individual-technology fit, galvanic skin response, functional near-infrared, brain-computer interfac

Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197

Emerging issues and current trends in assistive technology use 2007-1010: practising, assisting and enabling learning for all

Following an earlier review in 2007, a further review of the academic literature relating to the uses of assistive technology (AT) by children and young people was completed, covering the period 2007-2011. As in the earlier review, a tripartite taxonomy: technology uses to train or practise, technology uses to assist learning and technology uses to enable learning, was used in order to structure the findings. The key markers for research in this field and during these three years were user involvement, AT on mobile mainstream devices, the visibility of AT, technology for interaction and collaboration, new and developing interfaces and inclusive design principles. The paper concludes by locating these developments within the broader framework of the Digital Divide

Identifying Five Archetypes of Interaction Design Professionals and Their Universal Design Expertise

Systems and services based on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) are now prevalent in our daily lives. Digital transformations have been, and are still being, initiated across private and public sectors. As such, the consequences of digital exclusion are severe and may block access to key aspects of modern life, such as education, employment, consumerism and health services. In order to combat this, regions and countries such as the USA, Canada, EU and Scandinavia have all legislated universal design (UD) in relation to ICT, in order to ensure as many citizens as possible have the opportunity to access and use digital information and services. However, there has been limited research into how higher educational programs address legislated accessibility responsibilities. This paper looks into the discipline of interaction design (IxD). IxD is the design domain focused on ‘how human beings relate to other human beings through the mediating influence of products’ (Buchanan, R. (2001) Designing research and the new learning. Des. Issues, 17, 3–23). The study presents an analysis of Norwegian higher educational programs within IxD. Based on document analysis, we map the skillsets the study programs state to deliver and investigate to what degree UD expertise is included. Our findings indicate the study programs do not deliver adequate training in UD, in order to fulfill the professional responsibilities related to ICT accessibility. From our findings, we extrapolate five ‘archetypes’ of interaction designers. These personas-like analytical constructs hold slightly different characteristics. For each of the five, we propose UD expertise fitting key skillsets. We hope our contributions are useful both for the higher education sector and the industry and will contribute to raised awareness of UD skills so they can educate interaction designers in their different industry roles with required competences.acceptedVersio