Closing the Capacity-Ability Gap: Using Technology to Support Aging With Disability

Abstract

There is a critical need to develop supports for older adults who have a wide range of abilities, including those aging with long-term impairments. Without appropriate support, many individuals will be functioning below optimal levels and will face participation barriers. Technology holds great promise to provide individualized support for a wide range of abilities and for a variety of domains. To ensure technology interventions are designed well and meet research-documented user requirements, we need more specific, actionable models to provide guidance for those developing and designing interventions. In this paper, we present the TechSAge Aging and Disability Model to bridge models from the aging and disability literatures and to disambiguate the population of individuals aging into disability from those aging with disability (i.e., pre-existing impairments). We also present the TechSAge Technology Intervention Model to support aging with pre-existing impairments, which provides direction and touch points for technology interventions. These models reflect the complex and dynamic interaction between age-related changes and an individual’s prior capabilities and limitations. We describe the need for these models with respect to filling a gap in the disability and aging literature by highlighting the importance of differentiating between age-related changes and long-term impairments when designing interventions. We also show the need for quantitative and qualitative data to refine the models given complexities of the current state of the literature and survey data. The TechSAge Technology Intervention Model can be used to drive and inform technology redesign and development.

Learning latent actions to control assistive robots

“… 2000 ; Mitzner et al. 2018 ; Carlson and Millan 2013 ). A key advantage of these robots is their dexterity : assistive arms move along multiple degrees-of-freedom (DoFs), orchestrating complex motions like stabbing a piece of tofu or pouring a glass of water.…”

An Intelligent System to Enhance Visually-Impaired Navigation and Disaster Assistance using Geo-Based Positioning and Machine Learning

“…However, as stairs are built toward the fancy and quick-paced future that we all anticipate to witness, little did we notice that inconveniences are left behind to some neglected populations like the elderly population and the population with disabilities. Indeed, while technologies have contributed to the many's well-being and revolutionized the future, it would be unfair to ignore how it has also widened the technological generation gap, where the elderly population falls behind to adopt to new technologies, and the [1] capacity-ability gap, where the population with disabilities feel challenged in face of technologies. [2] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Disability impacts All of Us infographic, 61 million adults in the United States live with some type of disability, which is, in fact, 1 in every 4 adults in the United States.…”

Active robot-assisted feeding with a general-purpose mobile manipulator: Design, evaluation, and lessons learned

“…Technology interventions can be a solution by bridging the gap between physical capability and necessary functional ability [2]. Numerous specialized assistive devices, including robots, have been developed to help people with disabilities perform ADLs on their own [3].…”