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

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

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.