Assistive Technology for Daily Living

The first of the contextual activity areas in the comprehensive assistive technology model is that of Daily Living, and this is the subject of this chapter. Thus, the chapter describes assistive technology solutions designed to remove barriers to enable visually impaired and blind people enjoy independent living in their own home. These assistive technology solutions range from some very simple low technology devices to very sophisticated and specialised high technology solutions giving the chapter a large number of subsections and coverage of a wide variety of engineering methods. Within this diversity of assistive technology applications, there are some techniques that span several of the activities found in the daily living category. Labelling is one generic assistive technology described in the chapter and this has a range of applications in personal care, food preparation and using appliances. Similar generic technologies are those for light and colour detection and identification and these too are described in this chapter. Along with these general solution technologies, the chapter presents groups of devices for the areas of personal care, time-keeping, alarms and alerting, food preparation, using appliances andmoney amongst others. Summary conclusions, projects to pursue and reference citations close the chapter.