Grassroots Open Assistive Tech
This is an interesting bill under consideration now in Congress in the U.S. It would prohibit Medicare from requiring “prior authorization” before wheelchair repair.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/9364/text
Currently, as I understand it, if your wheelchair breaks and it is covered under Medicare plan that is run by a private insurance company, that company can require you to go through their approval process to get any sort of repair or replacement.
Leave a CommentThere are a lot of programs for improving access to assistive tech at the state level, often supported by universities and independent living centers. TechOWL at Temple University in Pennsylvania is a great example, with tons of resources and material if you want to learn about AT options. It stands for Technology for Our Whole Lives. (We love a cute acronym here at GOAT!)
Resource centers like TechOWl exist in part in the U.S. because of support from the Assistive Tech Act of 1988.
Every U.S. state and territory has a mandate, and state funding, to give people access to learning about, trying out, and obtaining assistive tech via an Assistive Technology Act Project (ATAP).
They all do four things :
So, TechOWL is the ATAP for the state of Pennsylvania.
A few years ago, because they had a staff member with some expertise in 3D printing, they started the CreATe Together project for 3D printing assistive tech. That has grown to become a well supported program with an online catalog of standard devices you can request (if you live in Pennsylvania), and they’ll find a partner to make it for you. They also can handle some custom requests.
It is an interesting model that I’d like to see more of in California, where we have Ability Tools as the main ATAP program, with a strong focus on reuse but not a lot of “maker” activity that I’ve found.
The level of AT you can make with a 3D printer seems a bit limited. In the TechOWL catalog we see mostly small gizmos that can help a person with grip strength or dexterity problems. This makes sense on one level because for AT that has a more critical function there could be quality control safety risks that a state funded program (with an array of loosely associated fabrication shops or volunteers with home workshops) is not prepared to handle.
On the other hand I could already use a bunch of these little plastic gizmos. A thing that punches pills out of those annoying blister packs? Hell yeah!
You can see a slightly wider array of 3D printable devices on sites like Printables or Creality – or the Internet Archive’s backup of older Thingiverse models.
It would be very interesting to go through all these sites and categorize the types of assistive tech that we can find there!
Leave a CommentIf you are interested in open source software projects for assistive tech, take a look at CBoard. It is a free/open source app for AAC (Assisted and Augemented Communication). It’s for anyone with speech and language impairments, facilitating communication with pictures and text-to-speech. You can use it to quickly construct useful communication boards, and it’s beautifully customizable. Currently, it supports 46 languages. There is a paid/subscription level to this app which makes it even more useful (and which supports the ongoing maintenance and development of the project).
If you want to learn more about the current, complicated political, technical, and social landscape of AAC, here is a list of useful updates from Bob Williams, of the organization CommunicationFIRST:
Best Practices for Online Meetings with AAC Users
Technology for Equitable Communication: AAC Users Weigh In
New Film, 13 AAC Users: Priorities for Future Research
The FCC Needs to Address Digital Discrimination Against People Who Need AAC | CommunicationFIRST
The FCC Needs to Address Digital Discrimination Against People Who Need AAC | CommunicationFIRST
2023-10-03 C1st Comments to DOJ on Title II Web Access Proposed Rule
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