Verity Healthcare

This yr’s ATIA convention is a very particular one for the INDATA Mission group. Considered one of our shows, “Off the Shelf Lodging for Growing old,” is a recipient of the 2025 Pleasure Zabala Spirit Award.

The convention will happen this week from January 30 by way of February 1 in Orlando, Florida. We’ll have loads to report once we get again. Within the meantime, here’s a preview of what we’ll be presenting.

AT in Schooling

The ATIA convention is a chance for distributors, practitioners, and other people with disabilities to study, community and share the most recent and biggest on the earth of assistive expertise.

Our first presentation, on January 30, explores “Transition Instruments for People with Cognitive Impairments in Put up-Secondary Schooling.”

All kinds of situations fall underneath the umbrella of cognitive impairments, and roughly 1 in 7 People are estimated to have them.

Assistive expertise is essential for college students with these impairments, as they generally affect such very important points of studying as:

• Visible reminiscence
• Hand/eye coordination
• Tremendous motor management
• Organizing data
• Understanding social cues

Newer AT instruments highlighted within the presentation embody:

Helperbird: With this browser extension, customers can simply regulate the dimensions and spacing of textual content on any web site, doc or PDF. Designed with dyslexia in thoughts, the Studying Ruler function breaks up the massive blocks of textual content with which dyslexic customers sometimes battle. The Ruler acts as “a visible anchor, guiding the eyes throughout every line and lowering the cognitive load required to trace textual content.” One other accessibility function is Coloration Blindness Help, which makes hyperlinks simpler to see and click on by underlining and outlining them. The hands-free Voice Typing instrument, which converts dwell speech to textual content in actual time, is “splendid for anybody with an harm or incapacity that makes typing tough.”

SMMRY: Helpful for college students with dyslexia or different studying issues, this free web site permits college students to add entire articles or chunks of textual content for a extra digestible abstract of the important thing data.

Glean: This AI-powered notetaking instrument permits college students to interrupt down class lectures in an simply digestible manner. As Assistive Know-how Coach Sarah Crawford explains, “If they’ve ADHD and battle to concentrate or are exhausting of listening to, Glean primarily creates a transcript and an audio recording of their professor’s lecture. Because it’s doing that, college students can add notes to look again at later or spotlight a sure half like, ‘This might be on the check.’” Glean at the moment helps college students at greater than 750 academic establishments throughout the globe.

Gemini 2.0: Google’s largest and most succesful AI assistant but, Gemini can break down data in numerous codecs and fashions tailor-made to college students with completely different studying kinds. For instance, by way of the GenExplainer function, you may study what a black gap is thru the usage of a cooking metaphor. You possibly can have a fancy historic occasion summed up in a brief poem. Or you may hear in regards to the science of volcanoes within the play-by-play fashion of a sports activities commentator. To develop Gemini in essentially the most inclusive manner, Google is tapping into the suggestions of educators, artists, and other people with disabilities.

AT for Growing old

Our second ATIA presentation serves as a becoming companion to the primary within the sense that it focuses on AT that’s extra helpful later in life, sometimes after individuals’s tutorial {and professional} careers.

“Off the Shelf Lodging for Growing old” highlights such assistive expertise and firms as:

Silverts: The chief in adaptive dressing since 1930, this firm sells clothes geared towards fixing widespread challenges of older wearers. For instance, they’ve zipper pants that permit for catheter entry and straightforward self-dressing for wearers with arthritis. Their open again shirts with snap closures on the shoulders “guarantee simple dressing whereas seated, standing or mendacity down, offering each consolation for the wearer and ease for caregivers.”

GrandPad: Via massive buttons and clutter-free navigation, the GrandPad pill permits seniors to simply join with their family members, whether or not over a telephone name, by way of video or sharing pictures and photographs of fond household recollections. GrandPad can be a useful instrument for retaining seniors energetic and engaged, because it comes with greater than 15 enjoyable and stimulating video games designed to enhance reminiscence and motor abilities. The pill can play music as nicely, which has many bodily, cognitive and psychological advantages for the getting older inhabitants.

ElliQ: Often called “the very first proactive, empathetic robotic companion,” ElliQ was designed with seniors in thoughts, however she can be useful for individuals with disabilities who dwell alone or anybody dealing with social isolation. From telling jokes and making small discuss to main train lessons and monitoring customers’ psychological and bodily well being, ElliQ is basically a robotic caregiver.

“Off the Shelf Lodging for Growing old” is the presentation that might be acknowledged as a recipient of the award named in reminiscence and honor of former ATIA Convention Schooling Chair Pleasure Zabala, who earned worldwide renown for her work on AT and Common Design for Studying (UDL).

“We’re proud and humbled to be related to such a champion of individuals with disabilities,” mentioned Easterseals Crossroads Director of Assistive Know-how Josh Anderson, who might be co-presenting alongside Vice President of Grownup Providers Brian Norton. “By spreading the phrase in regards to the energy of assistive expertise for individuals of all ages and talents, we hope we’re serving to proceed the mission she led with such dedication and compassion. We thank the ATIA for this unbelievable honor, and we look ahead to celebrating the varied world of assistive expertise at this yr’s convention.”

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