The term Assistive Technology has evolved over the years and identifies equipment or product systems, whether acquired, modified, or customized, that are used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. Considering the advances that have been made, what trends can be identified to provide evidence of the evolution of AT as devices that foster accessibility and empower users with different abilities? Through a systematic literature review we identify research items that offer evidence of the evolution of the meaning, purpose, and applications of AT throughout the history. This paper provides evidence that AT evolved from products to improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities toward enabling technologies that facilitate tasks for people with different needs, abilities, gender, age, and culture. This evolution will lead to a positive demystification of the meaning and applications of AT toward broad usage acceptance among mainstream users.
An integral part of spreadsheet auditing is navigation. For sufferers of Repetitive Strain Injury who need to use voice recognition technology this navigation can be highly problematic. To counter this the authors have developed an intelligent voice navigation system, iVoice, which replicates common spreadsheet auditing behaviours through simple voice commands. This paper outlines the iVoice system and summarizes the results of a study to evaluate iVoice when compared to a leading voice recognition technology.
Despite the potential benefits of assistive technologies (ATs) for people with various disabilities, only around 7% of Chinese with disabilities have had an opportunity to use ATs. Even for those who have used ATs, the abandonment rate was high. Although China has the world's largest population with disabilities, prior research exploring how ATs are used and perceived, and why ATs are abandoned have been conducted primarily in North America and Europe. In this paper, we present an interview study conducted in China with 26 people with various disabilities to understand their practices, challen…
The goal of this project is to create an inexpensive, lightweight, wearable assistive device that can measure hand or finger movements accurately enough to identify a range of hand gestures. One eventual application is to provide assistive technology and sign language detection for the hearing impaired. My system, called LiTe (Light-based Technology), uses optical fibers embedded into a wristband. The wrist is an optimal place for the band since the light propagation in the optical fibers is impacted even by the slight movements of the tendons in the wrist when gestures are performed. The prot…
Providing elderly and people with special needs to retain their independence as long as possible is one of the biggest challenges of the society of tomorrow. Teseo, a startup company spinoff from the University of Genoa, aims at accelerating the transition towards a sustainable healthcare system. Teseo's first concept and product, Arianna, allows for the automated recognition of activities of daily living at home and acts as a wellbeing and healthcare personalized assistant. This abstract outlines the main concepts underlying its features and capabilities.
The preliminary report by Siriraj Hospital suggested that 6% of population who are students in Thailand could be estimated to have learning disabilities. It is therefore necessary for our institute to develop suitable ICT technologies to assist the education of these learning disabilities children. We therefore developed a program called Thai Word Prediction Program. Thai Word Prediction program aims to assist students with learning disabilities in their writing. After the usability engineering, we conducted the experiment with students with learning disabilities at the School in Bangkok. Henc…
"I see it as a wellspring for my positive and upward journey in life.": Understanding Current Practices of Assistive Technology's Customized Modification in China
This is the preprint version of our paper on 2015 9th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth2015). An assistive training tool software for rehabilitation of dysphonic patients is evaluated according to the practical clinical feedback from the treatments. One stroke sufferer and one parkinson sufferer have provided earnest suggestions for the improvement of our tool software. The assistive tool employs a serious game as the attractive logic part, and running on the tablet with normal microphone as input device. Seven pitch estimation algorit…
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a chronic mental and behavioral disorder that interferes with everyday activities and has three core symptoms: inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. To help in reducing the effects of ADHD symptoms, there are multiple treatments, but none of them help in curing ADHD. Assistive technologies offer great opportunities in delivering treatments, especially those related to behavioral interventions, monitoring, and changing in a more flexible, acceptable and accessible way. Focusing on assistive technology for children with ADHD is very impor…
Reminiscence therapy is an inexpensive non-pharmacological therapy commonly used due to its therapeutic value for PwD, as it can be used to promote independence, positive moods and behavior, and improve their quality of life. Caregivers are one of the main pillars in the adoption of digital technologies for reminiscence therapy, as they are responsible for its administration. Despite their comprehensive understanding of the needs and difficulties associated with the therapy, their perspective has not been fully taken into account in the development of existing technological solutions. To infor…
Traditionally, caregivers, whether formal or informal, have taken the responsibility of providing assistance and care to patients with cognitive decline. Usually, both the caregiver and the patient are subjected to financial and emotional burdens, which impact the patient's life quality. To overcome this issue, Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) technologies have been adopted to replace the caregivers and complement patients' lack of intelligence. Technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have enabled intelligent ubiquitous learning for smart buildings to monit…
Human assistive robotics have the potential to help the elderly and individuals living with disabilities with their Activities of Daily Living (ADL). Robotics researchers focus on assistive tasks from the perspective of various control schemes and motion types. Health research on the other hand focuses on clinical assessment and rehabilitation, arguably leaving important differences between the two domains. In particular, little is known quantitatively on which ADLs are typically carried out in a persons everyday environment - at home, work, etc. Understanding what activities are frequently ca…
Institute for Intelligent Systems Research and Innovation (IISRI), Deakin University（迪肯大学智能系统研究与创新研究所（IISRI））
Exoskeletons and orthoses are wearable mobile systems providing mechanical benefits to the users. Despite significant improvements in the last decades, the technology is not fully mature to be adopted for strenuous and non-programmed tasks. To accommodate this insufficiency, different aspects of this technology need to be analysed and improved. Numerous studies have tried to address some aspects of exoskeletons, e.g. mechanism design, intent prediction, and control scheme. However, most works have focused on a specific element of design or application without providing a comprehensive review f…
One of the distinct features of this century has been the population of older adults which has been on a constant rise. Elderly people have several needs and requirements due to physical disabilities, cognitive issues, weakened memory and disorganized behavior, that they face with increasing age. The extent of these limitations also differs according to the varying diversities in elderly, which include age, gender, background, experience, skills, knowledge and so on. These varying needs and challenges with increasing age, limits abilities of older adults to perform Activities of Daily Living (…
The advancement of technology has progressed faster than any other field in the world and with the development of these new technologies, it is important to make sure that these tools can be used by everyone, including people with disabilities. Accessibility options in computing devices help ensure that everyone has the same access to advanced technologies. Unfortunately, for those who require more unique and sometimes challenging accommodations, such as people with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( ALS), the most commonly used accessibility features are simply not enough. While assistive techno…
The paper presents the design of an assistive reading tool that integrates read-aloud technology with eye-tracking to regulate the speed of reading and support struggling readers in following the text while listening to it. The paper describes the design rationale of this approach, following the theory of auditory-visual integration, in terms of an automatic self-adaptable technique based on the reader's gaze that provides an individualized interaction experience. This tool has been assessed in a controlled experiment with 20 children (aged 8-10 years) with a diagnosis of dyslexia and a contro…
In the era of virtuality, the increasingly ubiquitous technology bears the challenge of excessive user dependency, also known as user addiction. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have become increasingly integrated into daily life. Although discussions about the drawbacks of these technologies are abundant, their exploration for solutions is still rare. Thus, using the PRISMA methodology, this paper reviewed the literature on technology addiction and persuasive technology. After describing the key research trends, the paper summed up nine persuasive elements of user interfaces (U…
Employees face decisions every day - in the absence of supervision. The outcome of these decisions can be influenced by digital workplace design through the power of persuasive technology. This paper provides a structured literature review based on recent research on persuasive technology in the workplace. It examines the design and use of persuasive systems from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and theories. The reviewed studies were categorized into the research streams of technology design, user-centered research, and gamification. The purpose of the studies is categorized using a mod…
In light of technological development enforced by the pandemic, learning Chinese has become more digitalised. Confucius institutes went online and now follow 2021 to 2025 Action Plans for the Construction of Teaching Resources for International Chinese Education and International Chinese Online Education. New ways of learning Chinese emerged, such as educational games and intelligent tutoring systems ITS, some of them based on artificial intelligence. The aim of this systematic review is to examine recent research published in ScienceDirect and Scopus databases on the use and impact of educati…
Does Embodiment Matter to Biomechanics and Function? A Comparative Analysis of Head-Mounted and Hand-Held Assistive Devices for Individuals with Blindness and Low Vision
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University（纽约大学文化、教育与人类发展学院）；Rusk Rehabilitation, NYU Langone Health（Rusk康复中心，NYU Langone健康）；Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, NYU Grossman School of Medicine（纽约大学格罗斯曼医学院康复医学系）；ARxVision LLC（ARxVision公司）；Department of Ophthalmology, NYU Grossman School of Medicine（纽约大学格罗斯曼医学院眼科学系）；Department of Neurology, NYU Langone Health（纽约大学Langone健康神经学系）
This paper presents a systematic literature review of 292 publications from 97 unique venues on touch-based graphics for people who are blind or have low vision, from 2010 to mid-2020. It is the first review of its kind on touch-based accessible graphics. It is timely because it allows us to assess the impact of new technologies such as commodity 3D printing and low-cost electronics on the production and presentation of accessible graphics. As expected our review shows an increase in publications from 2014 that we can attribute to these developments. It also reveals the need to: broaden applic…
There have been initiatives that take advantage of information and communication technologies to serve civic purposes, referred to as civic technologies (Civic Tech). In this paper, we present a review of 224 papers from the ACM Digital Library focusing on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Human-Computer Interaction, the key fields supporting the building of Civic Tech. Through this review, we discuss the concepts, theories and history of civic tech research and provide insights on the technological tools, social processes and participation mechanisms involved. Our work seeks to direct f…
Technology is an extremely potent tool that can be leveraged for human development and social good. Owing to the great importance of environment and human psychology in driving human behavior, and the ubiquity of technology in modern life, there is a need to leverage the insights and capabilities of both fields together for nudging people towards a behavior that is optimal in some sense (personal or social). In this regard, the field of persuasive technology, which proposes to infuse technology with appropriate design and incentives using insights from psychology, behavioral economics, and hum…
Faculty of IT, Barrett Hodgson University（Barrett Hodgson大学信息技术学院）；Faculty of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Hamdard University（哈姆达德大学工程科学与技术学院）；LIRIS, Universite Claude Bernard Lyon1（法国里昂第一大学LIRIS研究所（注：LIRIS是Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Lyon的缩写，通常译为里昂大学信息、机器人与微电子实验室，但根据提取规则，若实验室本身是独立机构可提取，此处按机构级别提取）}]} 注：原问题中“Universite Claude Bernard Lyon1”正确名称应为“Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1”，但按原文保留。根据规则，LIRIS作为实验室/研究所级机构，直接提取。Barrett Hodgson University和Hamdard University均为大学，其下学院也按大学级别提取。最终确认机构为上述三个。但根据严格规则，“Faculty of IT, Barrett Hodgson University”和“Faculty of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Hamdard University”属于大学下属学院，按规则“提取到大学/学院/公司/研究院级别即可”，因此保留。LIRIS是独立研究机构，也保留。故输出三个机构。但根据原文格式，“Affiliation:”后跟着三个机构，分别对应作者α、ζ、β。因此正确输出三个机构。最终JSON应为：{）
This article presents an extensive literature review of technology based intervention methodologies for individuals facing Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Reviewed methodologies include: contemporary Computer Aided Systems (CAS), Computer Vision Assisted Technologies (CVAT) and Virtual Reality (VR) or Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted interventions. The research over the past decade has provided enough demonstrations that individuals with ASD have a strong interest in technology based interventions, which are useful in both, clinical settings as well as at home and classrooms. Despite show…
