“But, I Don’t Want/Need a Power Wheelchair”: Toward Accessible Power Assistance for Manual Wheelchairs

Power assist devices help manual wheelchair users to propel their wheelchair thus increasing their independence and reducing the risk of upper limb injuries due to excessive use. These benefits can be invaluable for people that already have upper limb joint pain and reduced muscular strength. However, it is not clear if the way that assistance is provided by such devices is what manual wheelchair users need and expect. 12 manual wheelchair users were interviewed to understand: the situations in which they find it difficult to propel their wheelchairs; situations they considered paramount to have power assistance; their experience or knowledge of power assist devices; and likes and dislikes of commercially available power assist devices. Finally, they were asked to comment on their ideal form factor of a power assist device. Users have suggested improvements of the devices' accessibility and visualized new ways in which they could interact with the technology. These interactions involve "chairable" devices independent from, but not excluding, wearable devices and mobile applications. We have identified the need of monitoring emotions and the need for designing an open source do-it-yourself wheelchair propelling assistance device which we believe is required equally in developed and in developing countries

Disability Design and Innovation in Low Resource Settings: Addressing Inequality through HCI

Approximately 15% of the world's population has a disability and 80% live in low resource-settings, often in situations of severe social isolation. Technology is often inaccessible or inappropriately designed, hence unable to fully respond to the needs of people with disabilities living in low resource settings. Also lack of awareness of technology contributes to limited access. This workshop will be a call to arms for researchers in HCI to engage with people with disabilities in low resourced settings to understand their needs and design technology that is both accessible and culturally appropriate. We will achieve this through sharing of research experiences, and exploration of challenges encountered when planning HCI4D studies featuring participants with disabilities. Thanks to the contributions of all attendees, we will build a roadmap to support researchers aiming to leverage post-colonial and participatory approaches for the development of accessible and empowering technology with truly global ambitions

A review of innovation strategies and processes to improve access to AT: Looking ahead to open innovation ecosystems.

It is essential to understand the strategies and processes which are deployed currently across the Assistive Technology (AT) space toward measuring innovation. The main aim of this paper is to identify functional innovation strategies and processes which are being or can be deployed in the AT space to increase access to AT globally. We conducted a scoping review of innovation strategies and processes in peer-reviewed literature databases and complemented this by identifying case studies demonstrating innovation strategies. The review includes WHO world region, publication year, AT type and a sector analysis against the Systems-Market for Assistive and Related Technologies Framework. We analyzed the case studies and interviews using thematic analysis. We included 91 papers out of 3,127 after review along with 72 case studies. Our results showed that product innovations were more prevalent than provision or supply innovations across papers and case studies. Case studies yielded two themes: open innovation (OI); radical and disruptive innovation. Financial instruments which encourage OI are needed and we recommend pursuing OI for AT innovation. Embedding AT within larger societal missions will be key to success governments and investors need to understand what AT is and their translational socioeconomic value