The garden-level apartment Brian Villani shares with two roommates in greater Boston is filled with material culture of young adulthood, including a big overstuffed couch, multiple gaming systems, oversize posters, and a cluttered kitchen. He likes his job at the corporate mail room so much that he takes the train to work every day. He lives close to his parents and has a passion for sports. His brother is getting married.
Villani has an extended set of technologies that are a mix of familiar and unique. A sensor-augmented trash can that opens with a hand or limb is one of the things he has in his house. He uses a phone app to open and close his blinds. The combined motor-cognitive task is simplified by the shower's on/off and temperature controls. Villani uses a smart speaker for music and internet searches, but he also has a voice-activated script on a tablets to remind him when he's done. The morning routine knits together the steps from home to office.
Villani attended the Threshold Program, a hybrid two-year college curriculum for young adults with developmental and cognitive disabilities, where he learned budgeting, time management, and meal planning. He took up this set of smart home tools and software applications as a follow on support for the daily living tasks he practiced in school.
Villani says that technology is how he gets the most independent skills possible and that he is expressing an idea that is rapidly changing the paradigm for prosthetics and "assisted" technologies in the United States.
Many people think of AT when they think of wheelchairs, walkers, and hearing aids. State disability services in the US have been shaped by this clinical understanding and offer coverage for medically necessary equipment. Medical technologies are still important. They don't always address the needs of adults like Brian.
In the past, people with disabilities have relied on human services for everything from cooking to organizing and reminders. The presence of a human is necessary sometimes. Sometimes self-advocates prefer a technology-led approach with remote check-ins and easy backup contacts instead of rotating staff of in-person assistants.
Prosthetics for this population are not about replacements for physical mobility. It is something less tangible, more diffuse, and requires a distinct paradigm for assistance, unimaginable even in the very recent era of the Americans with Disabilities Act, with its emphasis on crucial physical infrastructure. Chris uses assistance as a mix of independent housing, animal companions, and smart home technologies. It is a constellation of high-tech and low-tech in distributed, networked tools which can bridge some of the logistical barriers to employment.
There is a constellation of technology. There isn't a single system that will outfit a living space or workplace with "universal" features for accessibility This digital world won't have a single curb-cut effect. A human centered approach to assembling a suite of human services and tools that are flexible, elegantly orchestrated to meet the needs and requests of one person at a time is what is required. The future for automation doesn't have to be a replacement for human care. There is a new and evolving collaboration between humans and devices, low-tech and high-tech, domestic and professional. This expanded idea of AT can help create supports not only for medical needs but also for a full definition of life: life attended by critical everyday assistance, but without warehousing people with special needs.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
