Adult Social Care Glossary, v 0.6

Assistive technology enables people to live healthy, productive, independent, and dignified lives, and to participate in education, the labour market and civic life. Assistive technology reduces the need for formal health and support services, long-term care, and the work of caregivers. Without assistive technology, people are often excluded, isolated, and locked into poverty, thereby increasing the impact of disease and disability on a person, their family, and society. [WHO definition]

A subset of proactive services including: Equipment - community equipment; wheelchair; hydration solutions; robotic pets; audio books. Devices - medication management; mobile phone; tablet; automated systems; sleep/oxygen management; security solutions. Apps - health; wellbeing; exercise; language therapy.

Assistive technology (as used in this document)

Hardware and/or software that acts as a user agent [any software that retrieves and presents Web content for users], or along with a mainstream user agent, to provide functionality to meet the requirements of users with disabilities that go beyond those offered by mainstream user agents

NOTE
Functionality provided by assistive technology includes alternative presentations (e.g., as synthesized speech or magnified content), alternative input methods (e.g., voice), additional navigation or orientation mechanisms, and content transformations (e.g., to make tables more accessible).

NOTE
Assistive technologies often communicate data and messages with mainstream user agents by using and monitoring APIs.

NOTE
The distinction between mainstream user agents and assistive technologies is not absolute. Many mainstream user agents provide some features to assist individuals with disabilities. The basic difference is that mainstream user agents target broad and diverse audiences that usually include people with and without disabilities. Assistive technologies target narrowly defined populations of users with specific disabilities. The assistance provided by an assistive technology is more specific and appropriate to the needs of its target users. The mainstream user agent may provide important functionality to assistive technologies like retrieving Web content from program objects or parsing markup into identifiable bundles.

EXAMPLE 5
Assistive technologies that are important in the context of this document include the following:

- screen magnifiers, and other visual reading assistants, which are used by people with visual, perceptual and physical print disabilities to change text font, size, spacing, color, synchronization with speech, etc. in order to improve the visual readability of rendered text and images;

- screen readers, which are used by people who are blind to read textual information through synthesized speech or braille;

- text-to-speech software, which is used by some people with cognitive, language, and learning disabilities to convert text into synthetic speech;

- speech recognition software, which may be used by people who have some physical disabilities;

- alternative keyboards, which are used by people with certain physical disabilities to simulate the keyboard (including alternate keyboards that use head pointers, single switches, sip/puff and other special input devices.);

- alternative pointing devices, which are used by people with certain physical disabilities to simulate mouse pointing and button activations.

Equipment that helps you carry out daily activities and manage more easily and safely in your own home. Examples include electronic medicine dispensers, memory prompts, 'big button' telephones or remote controls, and pendant alarms for wearing around your neck or wrist. It also includes equipment that can detect potential hazards in your home, such as a fire or flood, or that can alert a carer or the emergency services in the event of a fall or seizure.

There is widespread confusion over the specific meanings of terms used in the Care Technology sector (Telecare, Tech Enabled Care, Care Tech, Assistive Tech, Telehealth, Telemedicine etc). There is an urgent need for a clear set of definitions covering (a) the different types of care tech (reactive vs preventative/predictive), (b) the distinction between technological products and physical aids, (c) the level of proactive input required from the care recipient.