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'Adaptive technology' is the name for products which help people who cannot use regular versions of products, primarily people with physical disabilities such as limitations to vision, hearing, and mobility.

Contents

Adaptive technology for people with blindness

Technology for visually impaired people

Technology for the Deaf and hearing impaired

Technology for speaking impaired people

Adaptive technology for those with manual mobility problems

Adaptive technology for people with blindness

Blind people use many products that have voice activation such as talking watches, talking calculators and talking computers. Talking scales, talking compasses and talking thermometers are also available. Talking computers use screenreading software to have the machine read to blind people. They also use products with Braille feedback, such as Braille watches and Braille writing devices. Many computer products for blind people are made by Freedom Scientific.

Technology for visually impaired people

Visually impaired people, who have eye problems but still have some sight, have computers which have enlarged screens so that images and text are much clearer to read. Another product for them is CCTV.

Technology for the Deaf and hearing impaired

Technologies to assist the Deaf and hearing impaired include closed captions on television and the TTY/TDD phone service. Also, blinking lights and vibration devices also help to enhance hearing impaired functioning in a predominantly hearing world.
Some technologies not specifically designed as adaptive have become popular with the Deaf: for example, devices such as text-messaging-equipped cellular phones and BlackBerry e-mail devices are almost ubiquitous among young Deaf people.

Technology for speaking impaired people

Speaking impaired people, those who have lost the ability to speak but can still hear, include but are not limited to people who have had strokes, other brain injury, or injury to the vocal cords through surgery or other insult. Computers may provide speech through speech synthesis, and text-messaging-equipped mobile phones are also popular..

Adaptive technology for those with manual mobility problems

People with limited manual mobility have software which enables non-manual methods of computer use, such as eye-driven keyboarding or speech recognition software. Robotic arms are also in development and a number of low-fi assistive devices are available such as jelly buttons, head wands and sip-and-puff devices.