Enhancing Abilities: Benefits of Assistive Technology for Disabilities

How assistive technology has eliminated the miseries of physically disabled persons is incredible and worthy of acknowledgment. Do you agree with the argument that technology has harmed humanity badly? If yes, you have reached the right platform to change your perception.

 In this era of science and technology, people with severe health issues or those affected by paralysis also have a chance to proceed in their lives with dignity and pride. Assistive devices have played a tremendous role for people with hearing, visual, mobility, cognitive, or speech impairments. The benefits of adding a happy moment to a person’s life are uncountable. However, we will share some unique paybacks of these supportive devices for people with disabilities. Let’s dive in.

Ensuring Safety through Assistive Technology

First, people with physical disabilities are more prone to accidents and injuries and need extra care and attention. Therefore, safety measures rest at the top of all the benefits we assert about any product, particularly for the disabled. To achieve this task, all assistive devices, whether traditional or modern, have lessened the chances of any mishap for a disabled person when carrying out his everyday jobs.

For decades, crutches, wheelchairs, hearing accessories, and many other devices have been helping people fight back their illnesses and stay safe. Being one of the future technologies, Assistive technology has revolutionized safety measures by introducing more advanced tools to protect the affected person. Several safety devices like remote-control door locks, safety alarms, anti-slip mats, grab bars, shower stools, and many more are on the market to help people battle any disability.

Develops Self-Dependence

The second significant benefit of using assistive technology is to create self-dependence in the paralyzed. Having a feeling of not being able to achieve or perform any task independently is painful. Besides fighting the disease or disability, relying on others to move or function kills more. Family and friends do a great job helping out their loved ones in case someone is facing a disability. Still, it is frustrating to seek helpers around you constantly.

Over time, ATs have solved most mobility issues by introducing wheelchairs, scooters, walkers, canes, crutches1, prosthetics, and orthotic devices. However, Microsoft’s dramatic role in introducing cutting-edge tools to assist disabled persons is fantastic. Introducing Seeing AI for the blind to get to know what is around them is excellent. It also enables them to control the devices with the movement of their eyes, leading them in the right direction.

Moreover, assistive technology leads the paralyzed towards financial autonomy by helping people acquire the education and job of their choice.

Leads to a Productive Role

With all trends turning upside down, disabilities no more create obstacles to playing a productive role in your society. Around us, we find many people with physical flaws managing to proceed in life while leaving all worries and barriers behind. After helping people stay safe, Assistive technology is further paving the way toward achieving greater purposes in their lives.

Before anything else, education is now accessible for all people facing any deformity by using supportive devices and science-backed techniques. These assistive devices can be low-tech to high-tech, focusing on improving the learning abilities of disabled students. Braille displays, magnifiers, screen display readers, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text systems are excellent efforts providing grounds for making people play a positive role in their life.

Spreads Equality

A polio survivor who later became an award-winning author of India, Samyak Lalit, rightly said, 

“Disability cannot stop me from becoming a complete personality.”

We can claim it more firmly because we have advanced options to choose assistive devices with each passing day. Subsequently, underestimating the abilities of physically disabled persons is non-operational now. Instead, most have excessive talent in different fields that an ordinary person cannot match.

With the advancement of research and technology, disabled persons have acquired equal opportunities to expose their hidden skills and live successful everyday life. Equality does not just mean having an equal chance to get a job, college admission, or a license. It starts with providing solid grounds to help them grow like normal humans.

Digitalizing educational and earning opportunities has opened new doors for the paralyzed to progress without exhausting their bodies. Each admirable platform is within its reach now, where they can entertain equal opportunities because they have similar abilities. 

Letting people live their Dreams

If you cannot move, it does not mean you stop dreaming. Each person is unique, and his individuality makes him one in a billion. Despite having physical disabilities, people have a right to struggle to achieve their dreams.

People with vision impairment or low vision can play games specially designed for them, thanks to assistive technology. Similarly, they can reach their destinations through buses, planes, and automated wheelchairs according to their requirements.

Moreover, managing their homes and businesses, interacting with people, and choosing a profession has become more convenient. To say honestly, they can live their dreams. Most plausible is the opportunity to share their successful journey worldwide with other disabled persons and enlighten their lives.

Addressing Depression through Assistive Technology

  The sacred duty which these assistive devices are carrying out is beyond assisting physical disabilities. That is to illuminate their ways and eliminate hopelessness from their minds. It is a bitter reality that disabled persons may face inevitable emotional upheavals resulting in anger and anxiety.

By using assistive technology, we improve the functionality of the paralyzed and decrease the risk of depression in any form. Many apps like MoodTracker Social Diary and Sancello: Anxiety & Depression are available to download on smartphones. These apps help users write their moods, join discussion forums, and access tools that psychologists use.

However, what Stephen Hawking said in one of his interviews with the New York Times is more than fabulous. In his words

 “My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you from doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit, as well as physically.”

 Restore Self-Confidence

An incredible gift of assistive technology is to adorn people with self-confidence. A person waiting for others to assist him can never be confident enough to progress. Making it possible to move, see, hear and speak with advanced technology is a great blessing for the whole world.

According to a survey by World Health Organization, about 2.5 billion people will need assistive devices to function generally by 2030. The statistics are alarming. If these tools remain inaccessible to the needy, we will overload this earth with insecure, unconfident, and unassured people.

 Letting People Smile Again

Technology is helping people heal and smile again. A significant deformity is found in children born with a cleft lip and palate. Feeding these babies is the most challenging task for mothers of cleft children. For such infants, specially designed artificial palates are the only solution to help them provide.

By inserting these palates, babies can take their feed better. Surgical procedures to repair their lip, nose, and palates are painful but impressive in helping them grow, eat, speak, and smile.

Speech therapy procedures for children with autism also greatly help improve their abilities and performance in life. In short, technology is genuinely helping people of all ages to live happily. No one can deny this fact in light of the above-given details.

Final Words

To conclude, the services of assistive technology to help people live healthy, secure, and independent life are immense and lovely. We must know that technology is best when it serves humanity, heals our wounds, and brings us together.