Assistive Technology:
Past, Present and Future

The technology doesn't have to be high-tech, but it should serve the purpose of "assistance" and can include anything from a stick one uses to reach for something to a walker or a wheelchair, or more complex items such as environmental controls or adapted vehicles.

This means that assistive technology has existed since the first homo sapiens picked up a branch to help himself over rough terrain.

Sophisticated forms date back for centuries as well, as the 6th century saw an image of a wheelchair being carved in stone on a Chinese sarcophagus. Today, it is available to support many common disabilities and may:

• Provide help with communication, such as speech, writing and typing aids
  

• Help people with difficulty accessing a computer with the standard keyboard and mouse. They include software programs such as a screen reader or on-screen keyboard and hardware, such as a head operated mouse.
  

• Provide exercises that stimulate train and assess cognitive functioning.
  

• Assist with daily living such as cooking, dressing, toileting, bathing, eating
  

• Provide assistance with hearing or visual limitations such as flashing light system for the doorbell, hearing aids and closed caption decoders for TV.
  

• Provide assistance with mobility such as wheelchairs, walkers and canes.
  

• Help with missing or disabled limbs such as artificial limbs, braces, supports
  

• Allow disabled individuals to take part in sporting or leisure activities.
  

• Support the muscular-skeletal systems and maintain positions needed to perform desired activities, such as molded seats, lumbar supports, and modifications to wheelchairs would fall into this category.
  

• Improve access to print materials such as Braille devices and translators, and large button telephones.
  

The website, www.newdisability.com, is a helpful resource on new developments in assistive technology. It has been designed as a platform for communication between the disabled community and the adaptive technology industry.

There is a forum where users, manufacturers and distributors can express feedback about all kinds of innovative technology solutions. Visitors can not only express the products that they like and already know, but also what they would like to see.

This article was written by Dr. Gene Emmer, president of www.MedServicesEurope.com.




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