Equipment and technology
Assistive technology professional
Specialises in the technology itself, from communication devices and eye gaze to environmental controls and mounting it all where you can reach it.
Where equipment gets complicated, a specialist in the technology gets involved. Communication devices, eye-gaze systems, switch access, environmental controls that let you work a door or a television, and the unglamorous but decisive question of how a device is mounted so you can actually use it from where you sit or lie.
How you reach this person, and who pays, depends on where you live. Set your country in Location and Compass will show what applies there.
What they can help with
- Matching a communication device to how you can move, see and sit
- Eye gaze, switch access and alternative ways of controlling a device
- Mounting, which is frequently what decides whether a device gets used
- Environmental controls for doors, lights, beds, phones and television
- Setting up, training and returning when your access method needs to change
- Trials, so a decision is based on using something rather than reading about it
When you might meet them
- When speech has changed enough that writing or typing is becoming the main route
- Before hand function makes a touchscreen unreliable, because access methods take time to learn
- When an existing device has stopped working for you
- When independence at home depends on operating something you can no longer reach
Things you could ask about
- Can I trial this properly before it is ordered?
- What happens when my access method changes, and how quickly can it be reconfigured?
- Who mounts it, and who fixes the mount when it moves?
- Who trains the people around me to use it with me?
- What is the plan if this stops suiting me in six months?
Not to be confused with
Not the same as an IT person or the device retailer. The assessment is about how you can access a device given how you move and see, which is a clinical judgement rather than a technical one.