People with a disability needed assistant and care in order for them to live a normal life. Society deemed disabled person cannot take care of themselves, however this is not entirely true. For those who still mobility enable, they can take care of themselves the same as a normal person could with the help of assistive technologies in today technology advance world.
How assistive technology help people with disabilities?
“Giving back what they lost”, that’s the true goal of assistive technology. People with lost limp can now have prosthetic to replace what they lost, a father who lost his arm can now use asisitive technology like prosthetic arm to lift his children, a joger who lost her leg could now run and jog with prosthetic running leg, a color blind man now can see and experience the world colorful nature with color blind glasses, a boy with bottom half body paralysis can now travel anywhere with the assistant of modern machine control wheel chair. These are only few part of the beneficial effect of modern technology to people with disabilities.
Read also: TheGuardian.com article on new tech to help disabled people
Although as mentioned above there are many important technology for disability which have come up recently, only the most intriguing 5 inventions or technologies are going to be discussed here.
5 helpful technologies for disabilities
Meta Helmet
The meta is actually a cloud AI guiding robot which has been designed by the Chinese organization, CloudMinds. This device helps blind people in understanding their surrounding environments.
The meta consists of sensors and cameras which can detect veracious object around it. It can also identify the traffic signals and zebra crossings. All this information is then uploaded in the cloud where artificial intelligence or the AI can assemble all of the information and interpret them accordingly. The final interpreted information is fed to the person using it.
This device is very useful to blind people as it can actually help them while traveling alone on the road or if they even want to go to the nearby market. This particular device also has the scope of immense improvement. And it can be surely expected that with the time to come there will be a more and more advanced version of this device in the market.
Dot Smartwatch
The dot is yet again another device which is used for the aid of the blind people. It uses braille to finally tell the time on the watch. That means that it is a braille watch. Now previously braille watches have been there for a very long time in the market for the blind. So what is new with this technology?
The answer is that this is not just a simple braille watch. It actually can connect to the smartphone and the blind people can even read messages using this watch. The messages can be read by four characters one at a time which also appears in the braille style. This device is like the next version of the simple braille watch. The dot actually lets the blind people get the essence of using a smartphone through a very simple watch.
Even this watch has a lot of scope for improvement. This time it can only give the blind people a chance to read short parts of a message one at a time but with the time this device can be replaced with a grandeur version which can change the face of the technology for disability or specifically the blind.
DynaVox EyeMax System
This system is very useful for people who are suffering from cerebral palsy or paralysis or stroke victims. This device only needs the function of one’s eyes. If someone’s entire body is unable to work, just with the help of their eye movement this device can start communication.
Basically, this device tracks the eye movements of the disabled and it recognizes that movement with certain letters and alphabets in its keyboard. This device then translates the words into an automated sound. This lets the disables people speak virtually.
Google’s Driverless Car
The driverless car of google is characterized by the goggle street map vie and artificial intelligence and can be used by an ample of different types of disabled people who cannot ride a car due to some of the other types of disability. The car just drives by itself and need not be manually operated by the driver. It is very useful for the traveling of disabled people.
Cochlear Implant
The cochlear implant has improvised a lot since its inception. It started with some faint noises and today a clear voice can be recognized using these implants and conversation can be easily made. This implant although still has room for a lot of improvement and in the coming years it will be better than its previous versions.
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Final Conclusion
Advancement of technology not only affect society, they also have impact on life occurrences such as business, lifestyle and education, even though there’s a different views and discussion on positive and negative effect of technologies, but we all can agree that assistive technologies gave people a more ‘comfortable, less burden, quick result and helpful’ way of life. People with disabilities will not feel abandoned by society with the help of these technologies, they can rejoin communities which they thought they would not fit anymore after become disabled.
Read also:
Assistive technologies can be helpful as long as the disabled person have a strong will to live and have a open mind about disabilities, the brain and heart that ignited the will to live is still a mystery in today advance tech world.
