HOW TECHNOLOGY HELPS DISABLED PEOPLE?

Being disabled is one of the hardest problem that a person can face. When you are disabled, it is too difficult for you to live a quality life, as you often feel unwanted and isolated from the society. This is caused by the fact that you think you always need somebody to help you do several things. However, thanks to today's technology, a lot of disabled people can overcome these difficulties. There are some technological devices such as hearing aids, motorized wheelchairs and bionic arms that help people who either have problems with hearing or are physically disabled. As people, we need to communicate and the best way to communicate is talking to each other. Since one needs to listen what the other is saying, for people who have problems with hearing, called hearing impaired people, it seems almost impossible to communicate thus setting them off the society. With the help of technology, however, these people can also have the opportunity of knowing how does it feel to be able to hear and communicate easily. There are hearing aid devices provides them with this opportunity. While some of those devices can be disturbing sometimes as they can be big and seen from outside making hearing impaired people feel uncomfortable, there are some high technology ones that is so small that cannot be seen from outside. These small devices are called in the ear aids (ITE) and invisible in canal aids (IIC) [1]. With these devices, hearing impaired people can live their lives like they don't have any disabilities. We all need to walk in order to get to our school or work and most probably most of us don't even realize how easy it makes our lives to have working legs. Some physically disabled people whose legs don't work have a great hardship in their need to move freely and this is called immobility. People that are immobile often fall back from their education and/or work. Wheelchairs can be solution to their problems. In these days since the technology improves, wheelchairs get better. Today there are some wheelchairs that have a motor to move and a joystick to control which you can use without so much effort and don't need help from anybody to use it. They are called electric-powered wheelchair (EPW). People using EPW's feel better because they realize that they are capable of doing something on their own. There are some disabled people that have disabilities from their hands or arms. Considering we do almost everything from eating to writing with our hands, this is very problematic for them. In addition to the problems that they already face by being disabled, they often feel excluded from the society. These disabled people have always wanted some technology to make their lives easier. With the latest enhancements in the technology, it is now possible for people who don't have an arm to get a bionic arm, an arm shaped robotic device, that will work as their arm. The ones that have the latest technology even look like a real arm and are very flexible so that with it, people can do so many things that a real arm can do. As explained by Charleton (2010), Claudia Mitchel, who had an accident and now using a computer controlled electricpowered bionic arm, can do her daily work easily [2]. Clearly, bionic arms make physically disabled people's lives much easier. Taking everything into consideration, although being disabled is really hard, technology can help disabled people in many ways. With the help of technological devices they use, they live their lives much easier and they don't feel isolated from the society.

References
[1]: K. Sickel, Shortest Path Search with Constraints on Surface Models of Inear Hearing Aids 52. IWK, Internationales Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium (Computer science meets automation Ilmenau 10. - 13.09.2007) Vol. 2 Ilmenau: TU Ilmenau Universittsbibliothek 2007, pp. 221-226. Retrieved on May 25, 2011 from http://www5.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Forschung/Publikationen/2007/Sickel07-SPS.pdf [2]: Gene Charleton, Bionic Arm Moved by Thought (May 26, 2010), para. 3. Retrieved on May 25, 2011 from http://news.discovery.com/tech/bionic-arm-moved-by-thought.html

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