By creating assistive devices using the most advanced technology, the tech gurus help improve the lives of people with disabilities and contribute to their empowerment.
Check out these tech gadgets that play a significant role in making the lives of persons with disabilities more comfortable.
1. Sesame Phone
The Sesame phone is a hands-free smartphone made for people with limited movements, such as paralysis or spinal cord injury. This device tracks the user’s head movement and allows full control of the phone.
This exciting technology allows the head to work like a finger does and enables swipes, taps, gestures, and more to control the smartphone. The device is a modified version of Google’s Nexus 5 that performs almost the same functions.
Since it runs on Android, users can download applications using the head and even play games. Experts do advise, though, that users do not play fast-paced games for safety purposes.
2. Braille Edge 40
This braille device for people with limited vision blind people enables them to control their smartphones, computers, or tablets without much strife. Braille Edge 40 connects with your device using Bluetooth or a USB cable and converts the text on the device display into braille. It also lets the user navigate the device and its built-in buttons like ESC, Tab, Shift, Control, Windows key, and more to perform most of the tasks quickly.
Apart from being a controlling device, it also has built-in applications like Notepad, Alarm, Scheduler, and more. Besides, it has data storage and supports a 32GB SDHC card to store documents, books, and more to read them in braille.
3. Neomano Robot Glove
This is a robot glove that enables people with disabilities, such as multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, spinal injury, or recovering from a stroke, to pick things up and grip firmly. The glove is worn over the index finger, thumb, and middle finger. A single press on the Bluetooth controller activates titanium wires housed in the glove and closes the wearer’s hand. Users with mobility problems can hold items, twist open bottles and containers, turn pages as well as open doors, and much more.
4. Liftware
This tech gadget is an eating-aid utensil. It helps stabilize grip and reduce spilling of contents while eating, mostly useful for people with tremors or motion disorders like Parkinson’s disease. Liftware acts as a self-stabilizing handle attached to the eating tools such as spoons and forks, reducing the shaking significantly. The device makes the attached utensil stay level when the hand moves, bends, and twists.
The gadget’s leveling handle contains sensors that detect the changes in the user’s hand’s intended movement in three dimensions. It is an easy tool to control with just two parts, including the utensil attachment and leveling handle. Connect the utensil attachment, turn it on automatically, and start eating. It is a rechargeable device.
5. Luke Prosthetic Arm
A scene in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) inspires the Luke Prosthetic arm. Precisely, the concept mimics when Luke Skywalker’s bionic hand responds to the probes of a medical robot.
You’ll love to know that it can restore the sense of touch in cases of paralysis. By creating the Luke prosthetic arm, researchers have found a way to allow amputees to feel sensations of touch. By implanting a device in the amputee’s residual nerves and electrodes and placed in muscles. This enables an information loop that transfers signals to the brain prompting feelings of touch.
6. UNI
This gadget assists people with low hearing and those with speech impairment to communicate with others. It is a two-way communication device that will detect sign language using its camera and immediately convert it to speech. On the other hand, it will also convert dialogue into text, allowing two-way communication.
Furthermore, the device has built-in software to create custom sign language and customize it according to the user’s needs.
7. Kenguru Electric Car
Although persons using wheelchairs can also drive, it can be time-consuming and challenging. Imagine the hassle of collapsing the wheelchair and transferring themselves onto the vehicle!
Luckily, the Kenguru electric car designed by Stacy Zoem, who has muscular atrophy, allows persons with disabilities to stay in their wheelchair while driving.
It is considered a community car, only reaching twenty-five miles per hour, the legal maximum for such a vehicle. If you’re looking to go grocery shopping or get a haircut in your nearby salon, the Kenguru Electric Car is your buddy.
8. Smart Belt
The Smart Belt was built in May 2013 by senior engineering students at Rice University in Texas. The Seizure Monitoring and Response Transducer Belt helps persons with epilepsy and seizures which can happen without warning.
The belt is designed such that it can transmit wireless messages to guardians or caretakers. Unfortunately, this gadget is only useful for children aged six years and below. But the good news is that experts are still working on more advanced devices like this appropriate for all ages.
9. The Genny, the hands-free wheelchair for all terrains
The Genny is a hands-free wheelchair developed by Italian inventor Paolo Badano, who suffered a motor accident and needed a wheelchair as a result. The wheelchair is made to detect shifts in weight and body movements of the user. It uses this technology to detect whether to go forward, backward, or come to a halt. This smart wheelchair is suited to indulge the user’s adventurous side as it can be operated hands-free while carrying out another activity.
What’s more, this wheelchair can be customized to suit the user’s unique needs and preferences.
There are more technological innovations and products that help keep accessibility for people with disabilities at the forefront. However, there is room for growth in creating these assistive tech gadgets, as more inventions could come in handy for people with all types of disabilities.
Check out our blog on Top Ten Gadgets for Persons with Disabilities.