Research

Access to and use of mobile wireless technology has become critical to social and economic participation for people with disabilities. As the technology increases in power and sophistication, these customers increasingly rely on mobile devices and software for functions previously available only through dedicated ‘assistive technology’. Successfully serving this large and growing population has become a market imperative as well as a legislative mandate for the wireless industry...

Access to and use of wireless consumer technology (e.g., mobile devices like cellphones and tablets, software and services) has become critical to social and economic participation. This is especially true for people with disabilities. This article presents data from the Survey of User Needs (SUN) conducted by the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Technologies (Wireless RERC) from September 2012 through April 2013. The SUN focuses on wireless use among people with...

 People with disabilities are generally more vulnerable during disasters and publicemergencies than the general population. Physical, sensory and cognitive impairments may result ingreater difficulty in receiving and understanding emergency alert information, and greater difficulty intaking appropriate action. The use of social media in the United States has grown considerably inrecent years. This has generated increasing interest on the part of national, state and localjurisdictions in...

Access to and use of wireless consumer technology (e.g., mobile devices like cellphones, smartphones, tablets, software and services) has become ever more critical to social and economic participation, particularly for people with disabilities. Rates of ownership of wireless devices among people with disabilities have risen considerably in recent years, narrowing substantially the gap in ownership rates with the general population. But what do people with disabilities actually do with their...

This paper examines possible reasons why technology may not be living up to its promise for some people with disabilities (including poor policy implementation, low accessibility, cost, disinterest, lack of awareness, prejudice) and describes preliminary results from the first round of a futures-oriented Delphi survey.

Decades of technological development have not guaranteed compatibility between cellphones and hearing aids. Federal regulations have attempted to reduce the variability in interoperability between these two types of devices by requiring cellphone handset manufacturers and wireless service providers to offer a certain percentage of their devices with sufficiently reduced electromagnetic radiation (meeting American National Standards Institute’s M3 and T3 ratings for acoustic and...

Changes in memory are one of the most frequently reported cognitive deficits among people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and are one of the factors with the greatest impact on independence and quality of life following injury. Evidence supports the use of external aids in the treatment of memory impairments in adults following TBI. This article describes the development and initial user-testing of a mobile app designed to run on Google Glass to serve as an external memory aid for people...

Cellphones, smartphones and tablets offer considerable potential to enhance the independence and social and economic participation of people with disabilities. The rapid proliferation of smartphones and tablets has offered new low-cost speech generating options on mainstream platforms for users of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices. Data are presented from the Survey of User Needs (SUN), a national survey on use of mobile wireless technology by people across several...

The Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system is a free, opt-out, national emergency alerting service that was deployed in 2012 as one component of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning Systems (IPAWS). Since 2012 over 10,000 WEA messages have been transmitted to mobile phones in the U.S. In 2015, a national online survey on WEAs (2015 WEA Survey) was conducted to understand the effectiveness of WEA messages for people with disabilities. The survey collected data on availability, awareness and...

The rapidly expanding market for wearable computing devices (wearables), driven by the confluence of information and communication technology and public acceptance of a design aesthetic, suggests nearly limitless potential for consumer uses. As adoption of wearables spreads, there are cultural and social impacts that represent both barriers and opportunities, with subsequent public policy ramifications. All too often designers, technologists, and policymakers operate independently;...