Assistive Technology Essay

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Assistive technology options for individuals with complex communication, physical, and learning needs Introduction Assistive technology aims to provide a range of options to individuals with physical, communication and/or learning needs. These can include difficulties with communication, such as speech impediments, dysprosody, mutism, and communication related difficulties resulting from movement disorders (Church & Glennen, 1992). Physical needs can include movement and motor control related needs and may be broadly grouped into two types: movement initiation difficulties, and movement control difficulties. Movement initiation difficulties relate to the inability to initiate or produce movement by an individual and can include, for example, paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury, or cerebral palsy. Movement control difficulties may refer to an individual’s inability to control their movements and may include various categorisations of movement spasticity (Cook & Polgar, 2013). Learning needs refer to a large spectrum of difficulties individuals may face in learning and education. This can include severe learning difficulties related to brain damage such as lesions (as may often occur in individuals with cerebral palsy) and other less severe learning difficulties related to, for example, genetic factors (Glennen & DeCoste, 1997). Learning needs, communication needs, and/or physical needs may be exhibited by a wide range of individuals with a variety of conditions and diagnosis. The range of needs that may be found across individuals and the combinations of different needs mean that, while broad categorisations of needs may be made, there are a large variety of inter-person differences in needs. Thus, assistive technologies need to be flexible to differences in needs and designed in such a way as to meet a large range of individual
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