4 Ways iPads Are Changing the Lives of People With Disabilities

I just read this article: http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/ipads-disabilities/ and I wondering what people thought of using Ipads (other Tablets are available of course) in these ways?

Does anyone out there have experience of using Ipads and are they as useful as this article claims?

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Permalink Reply by Deborah on September 19, 2011 at 13:41

I'm a support worker for a little girl with profound learning difficulties and cannot speak.

She's recently been given an iPod from her school and is using it to communicate - she has an app with symbols that she can use to form sentences to ask for things, tell us about her day, have a general chat - and for the first time ever - be cheeky verbally back to you - probably not supposed to like that but it's great the way it's enabled her to express her opinion without us having to reach for the sign dictionary - so yup I think ipads and tablet are a big part of the futre for people with disabilities!

Debs

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Permalink Reply by Helen Donaldson on September 20, 2011 at 11:25

I visited Naidex in Glasgow last week and was pleased to see the Steeper stand demonstrating an environmental control system that is powered/controlled by an IPad or IPhone (with app on board). I especially like that it uses relatively "normal" stuff that (i.e. the phone or tablet) but I do find frustrating the dominance of the Ipad/Iphone platform. Contrary to the quote in the article, it is not the case that "everyone has an iPad, everyone has an iPod". It's true that many people have smartphones or tablet computers but so many markets seem rarely to look beyond them. I'd be disappointed if this market did what the MP3 player and smartphone accessories market has done and ignore the existence of anything that doesn't start with an "I".

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Permalink Reply by Linda Jane McLean on October 14, 2011 at 9:38

Hi, Steven

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