Her doctoral thesis involves user involvement in the allocation of assistive activity technology. Moreover, it addresses how this kind of adaptive technology can contribute to activity and participation in everyday life on the users' own terms. An important field of interest is how different forms of social service organisations are significant for social work practice and service delivery. Professional understanding and user involvement have been key topics for exploration.Sylvia Söderström is a professor in Health Science at NTNU. Her research field is in disability studies with a special focus on children and young people`s everyday lives and on the significance of technology, participation and social inclusion. The methodological approach is mainly qualitative and some central perspectives are interactionism, STS (science, technology and society) and intersectionality.
Purpose: This article critically examines user-involvement in the service delivery process for assistive activity technology. Methodology: Data were collected in semi-structured interviews with 44 end users of assistive activity technology and in focus group interviews with 11 professionals at Norway's Assistive Technology Centre. Data was analysed according to a stepwise deductive-inductive approach. Findings: Flawed organisational principles like division of responsibility, unclear regulations, and a lack of competence with assistive activity technology among service professionals have hindered user involvement in the service delivery process. Conclusion: A missing knowledge of assistive activity technology among professionals and the current organisation of services creates barriers for a positive collaboration with users in the service delivery process of assistive activity technology.
ä IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONThe spread of information among users and courses for professionals should be expanded to ensure the necessary competence with assistive activity technology within the service delivery process. In developing the service delivery process for assistive activity technology, professionals should act less as guardians of traditional functional requirements and more as active providers of different technological solutions. The service delivery process for assistive activity technology should allow long-term testing to identify relevant social and physical factors affecting the use of this type of technology, before delivery. Guarantees and complaint systems should be established in the service delivery process for assistive activity technology.
ARTICLE HISTORY
BACKGROUND: Different types of assistive technologies can support participation for people with disability; nonetheless, technology can break with people's self-image, sometimes resulting in technology abandonment. OBJECTIVE: This article focuses on how assistive activity technology can be used as symbolic expressions of identity among people with physical disability. METHODS: Qualitative, semistructured, in-depth interviews with people with physical disability using assistive activity technology. 2 RESULTS: The use of assistive activity technology is most often voluntary and based on personal interest. The use of assistive activity technology affects how the informants experience themselves and their social surroundings, and how they act in social activities. Assistive activity technology provides people with disability the opportunity to show themselves from a positive perspective in recognisable and commonly valued activities in society. This phenomenon is changing how other people see and understand people with disability. CONCLUSIONS: Assistive activity technology has the potential to contribute as symbolic expressions of identity for people with physical disability. The technology contributes through positively changing how individuals experience themselves and how other people perceive them. A new finding is that assistive activity technology differs from other assistive technology because the choice of using assistive activity technology is normally based on individual preferences and interests.
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