SmartHome Residents Testing Technology To Assist In Employing Those With Disabilities

The proceeds from the Special Appeal at Friday night’s Imagine! Celebration Dinner and Auction will go to support Imagine!’s SmartHomes. This unique project is providing the residents who live in Imagine!'s two SmartHomes opportunities to use technology to increase their independence and community interaction.

The SmartHomes are also serving as laboratories of sorts to test and refine technologies that can be used to keep other individuals with developmental disabilities in their own homes longer, and to provide staff efficiencies to other residential service providers.

Here’s a great example of that second SmartHome goal in action: Several residents of the Bob and Judy SmartHome are helping to test some task prompting systems that may assist individuals with developmental disabilities in gaining and keeping meaningful employment.

The residents have teamed with the engineering team at Assistive Technology Partners to test an innovative project funded by the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) as part of the RERC-Workplace Accommodations Grant. This project is exploring the use of two different task prompting systems that could aid an individual with a disability in successfully performing assembly line tasks. Task prompting is similar to creating a check list to make sure the proper steps are being performed in the correct order for a given task.

The job that was chosen involves packaging Chocolate First Aid Kits. The first aid kits contain chocolate bars and bottles of chocolate candy. The kits are sold in gift shops throughout the United States.

The SmartHome residents are using two different types of prompting systems, so the researchers can compare the two systems and determine if one is more effective then the other. In both systems, there is a checklist or sequence of tasks that need to be preformed. In the first system, the individual must determine if the task has been performed and then hit a button to check it off the list and proceed to the next task. In the second system, a tool is developed to determine if the task has been performed. The tool utilizes sensors placed in the environment to know what has been completed. If the task has been completed, the next step is automatically presented.

The researchers hope to discover that the second system is more effective then one which relies on a human to hit a button to advance to the next step. The use of this information will be valuable in helping devise future projects for helping individuals with cognitive disabilities be successful in employment settings.

Thanks to Assistive Technology Partners for providing the information for this post, and for allowing SmartHome residents to take part in research that may have a powerful impact on their independence and quality of life.