Background: With the Coordination Reform Act initiated in 2012, Norwegian occupational therapists in municipal practice have been given responsibilities concerning clients with cognitive impairments. With emphasis on supporting best practice, the aim was to investigate the practice of Norwegian municipal occupational therapists (OTs) in their assessment of clients with cognitive impairments. Method: An online questionnaire was used to collect data from 497 of 1367 OTs in Norwegian municipalities (RR ¼ 36%) Results: The most frequently used methods were informal interviews (91%), observations (91%) and standardized assessments (73%). The most frequently used standardized assessments were the Clock Drawing test (60%) and the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE 59%). The most common reasons for using standardized assessments were to get a better foundation for initiating interventions (74%), to get more reliable results (64%) and to measure the effect of interventions (47%). The most common reasons for not using standardized assessments were that they did not have competence (49%) or that they did not have access to the materials (40%). Conclusion:The results indicate that there are challenges when it comes to the methods and standardized assessments used. These findings invite further research on enabling municipal OTs to move further towards evidence-based practice. ARTICLE HISTORY

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This study illustrated a conflicted practice related to choices OTs make in their practices. They valued the importance of working occupation based, however, they chose to use impairment based standardized assessments. They expressed a need to engage in professional development, but due to heavy workloads, the limited power they experienced and lack of knowledge, this was difficult.

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In this paper, different aspects of the development of universally designed (UD) products have been highlighted, and two different product development projects have been compared, in order to try to analyse the challenges companies face when they engage in creating UD solutions compared to the development of assistive technology and modular based solutions. Some conclusions have been drawn: The time before reaching break-even in the project whose purpose it was to create a universal design solution, was many times longer, due to the unstable and complex development circumstances. When time-to-market is longer and project costs are higher for universally designed products compared to modular systems (often represented by assistive technology) or mainstream technology products, there are limited commercial reasons to invest in universally designed solutions.