Ubiquitous computing tools and methods for supporting the mental, physical and social well-being of people with disabilities

在加拿大，大约32.7%的12岁以上人口报告说，由于疾病/疾病，他们的活动“有时”或“经常”受到限制。加拿大政府的创新、科学和经济发展部最近指出，“加拿大残疾人和其他加拿大人有着同样的抱负——他们希望有机会找到高薪的好工作，为社区和经济做出贡献，为自己和家人创造更好的生活。”它呼吁制定解决方案，“帮助加拿大残疾人克服阻碍他们充分参与工作的障碍。”虽然促进工作场所的参与很重要，但残疾人士的生活包括精神、身体和社会障碍，也必须加以解决。拟议的工作旨在支持工作场所以外的残疾用户的福祉。拟议的工作将探索如何开发无处不在的计算系统，帮助残疾人参与行动，克服他们生活中的精神、身体和社会障碍。这项工作将建立在现有的健康信念模型（HBM）的基础上，这是一种社会心理学模型，传统上用于解释和预测行为，特别是与人的健康有关的行为。HBM表明，修正因素（如人口特征、心理特征和知识）可以影响一个人的信念和动机，再加上行动线索，促使一个人采取特定的行动，最终影响他们的健康结果。将其作为一个框架，我们将开发自动化、个性化和情境感知的工具和方法，用于管理和提供信息和线索，以增强用户对其状况的感知和信念（以及他们在辅助ubicomp服务的帮助下可以实现的目标），从而积极影响他们的精神、身体和社会福祉。虽然拟议的工作将促进系统的发展，可以潜在地帮助任何用户，我们将首先集中研究个人的障碍，影响他们的动机和能力，从事许多常规活动，限制他们的社会交往，影响他们的发展和维护个人关系。我们将通过开发和评估针对不同用户群体的辅助技术来为拟议的研究奠定基础，这些用户群体包括患有痴呆症的老年人、有视觉障碍的人以及有运动障碍的人（如肌萎缩侧索硬化症）。在使用这种方法时，我将对泛在计算领域和人机交互领域做出贡献。这种方法还允许我通过调查所提出的方法和工具在真实使用中的工作方式来验证所提出的研究。同时，这项工作将应用于实际用户的实际问题。

In Canada, approximately 32.7% of the population aged 12+ years reports being limited in their activities "sometimes" or "often" due to disease/illness. The Government of Canada's Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada department recently noted that "Canadians living with disabilities have the same ambitions as all other Canadians-they want opportunities to find good, well -paying jobs, make a contribution to their communities and the economy, and build a better life for themselves and their families." It called for solutions "to help Canadians with disabilities overcome barriers that come in the way of their full participation in the workplace." Although it is important to enable participation in the workplace, living with a disability includes mental, physical and social barriers that must also be addressed. The proposed work aims to support the well-being of disable users beyond the workplace. The proposed work will explore how to develop ubiquitous computing systems that will help individuals with disabilities engage in actions to overcome mental, physical and social barriers in their lives. This work will build upon the existing health belief model (HBM), a social psychological model which has been traditionally used to explain and predict behaviors, particularly ones related to a person's health. The HBM suggests that modifying factors (such as demographic characteristics, psychological characteristics, and knowledge) can affect a person's beliefs and motivations, which coupled with cues to action triggers a person to take particular actions that ultimately affect their health outcomes. Using it as a framework, we will develop automated, personalized and context-aware tools and methods for curating and providing information and cues that will augment the user's perception and belief about their condition (and what they can achieve with the aide of assistive ubicomp services) as a way to positively affect their mental, physical and social well-being. Although the proposed work will facilitate the development of systems that can potentially help any users, we will initially focus the research on individuals with impairments which affect their motivation and ability to engage in many regular activities, and limits their social interactions and impacts their development and maintenance of personal relationships. We will ground the proposed research through the development and evaluation of assistive technologies for different groups of users, such as older adults with dementia, individuals with visual impairments, and people with motor impairments (such as ALS). In using this approach, I will make contributions to both the ubiquitous computing area and human-computer interaction area. This approach will also allow for me to validate the proposed research through studies investigating how the proposed methods and tools work in authentic use. At the same time, the work will be applied towards real problems for real users.