Online Assignment #3

Online Assignment #3

AT for Physical Disabilities

High Tech

Eye-tracking

Eye tracking technology is a form of assistive technology designed for individuals with no control, or only limited control over their hand movements.  The devices are designed to follow the movement of the eyes, or in some cases head, and allows the person to navigate through the web or their computer system with only slight movements of the eyes or head.  This type of software allows the person to complete any number of tasks on the computer including typing, games (socialization) or essentially any other sort of task.  The software and hardware associated with these has improved drastically and continues to get better.  A drawback is that they can be very expensive so they are less common than the less sophisticated forms of AT, items such as mouth sticks and head wands.

Medium Tech

Oversized trackball mouse

A trackball mouse, and mice in general are no longer considered to be high tech forms of assistive technology but nonetheless continue to be very effective tools. Someone may, for example, use a trackball mouse in conjunction with a head wand or mouth stick. It is relatively easy to manipulate a trackball with these devices and much harder to manipulate a standard mouse. Someone with tremors in the hands may also find this kind of mouse more useful because once the person moves the mouse cursor to the right location, there is less danger of accidentally moving the cursor while trying to click on the mouse button. A person with tremors in the hands could also manipulate the trackball mouse with a foot, if there is enough motor control in the feet. (http://webaim.org/articles/motor/assistive#other)  A challenge for this form of technology would be its accuracy depending on the physical disablility, Something like eye tracking would be just as effective and potentially far more accurate.

Low Tech

A low tech form of assistive technology for students with a physical disability is pencil weights.  These weights are designed for students with fine motor or sensory integration problems who may have issues placing enough consistent pressure on a pencil for its effective use.  While we do often tend to look for more technological forms of assistive technology to assist students with writing, voice recognition software, that technology is not always available in all places. Pencil weights can be a useful backup in the right situation.