What are types of Assistive Devices and how are they used?

Devices that help individuals with disabilities to live a more independent life by using technology are called Assistive devices. If the organization has a very strong Preventive Maintenance program, then it is easy to ensure that the devices are running in the manner they are supposed to, they are safe to use and are helpful for their users.  

Types of Assistive Technology:

There are several devices available that help the people with various disability by which the tasks become easier to perform. Let us study a few examples below.  

Gross Motor Assistance: There are many mobility devices present such as wheelchairs, scooters, prosthetic and orthotic devices are there to help people with physical disability. In public people with disability use wide doorways and ramps etc to access any public facilities, this becomes easier with the help of assistive devices.  

Fine Motor Assistance: People with disability also want to participate in sports and physical activities. There are high-performance/range assistive devices that assist the people with disability. There are devices such as pencil grips, adaptive switches, page turners etc they help the people with disability with different kinds of motor tasks. There are many other devices which help by aiding in dressing, cooking etc.

Sight Assistance: Some people have a very low vision, they can be benefited with the help of sight assistive devices. There are bold markers and dark-lined paper that can help the individual complete written tasks. There are many magnifiers present too which can help people see easily.  

Hearing Assistance: There are devices which help people with hearing problems. They can increase the access to media of deaf individuals.  

Educational Devices: There are many computers based assistive devices that help individuals with cognitive disabilities. For example, we have tried to speech software that helps the student who have trouble reading. Then we even have speech to text feature that helps us to write. We have voice recognition and other features too.  

Setting up a Preventive Maintenance Program

Investing in Assistive devices and similar technology is a significant investment. No matter what we are using these devices for, it is mandatory to maintain them in the best way possible, as any fault will directly lead to a threat to the life of people using it. For organizations too, it is good for the performance to maintain all the devices properly. There are a few components that can bring in strong preventive maintenance program in the organization that might help all the devices stay operational and reliable.  

Schedule Regular Maintenance:

All the Assistive Devices come with a set of manuals that has all the instructions to be followed. By entering the data one can set us a maintenance management system that we even call as CMMS. This will help us track and schedule the maintenance tasks. At regular intervals one can perform cleaning tasks on a time to time basis. This will help the devices stay operational and safe.  

Easy to use work order system:

Even if the organization has a good preventive maintenance program there are chances that Assertive devices will break or malfunction. Keeping this in mind it becomes extremely important to streamline the whole program, for this we need to regularly keep a track on the devices that are facing regular problems. We need to repair them as soon as possible and then even need to track the performance. Whenever a repair is needed, we need to enter the work order and then manage the whole task accordingly.  

Manage parts that are replaceable:

In Preventive Maintenance we look at the parts that need to be replaced. We can order them on demand or even book a schedule for purchasing them again. There need to be a right system for the above said approach. It is good to accumulate the Preventive Maintenance data and then to predict what needs to be done and when it needs to be done.  

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Conclusion:

Assistive Devices are amazing application of technology, people with disability rely on devices like these. There is a wide range of these devices that are available to us. Wide availability also increases the accessibility of this technology. Preventive Maintenance program helps us keep the working of these devices perfectly fine so that the individual using it can focus on their daily tasks that are present in front of them.