Disability

After developing hardware for computers and laptops for years, Sweden's Tobii Dynavox has now brought its eye-tracking know-how to Apple's iPad, giving a voice to folks with conditions like cerebral palsy, ALS and spinal cord injury.

For people who are deaf or hard of hearing, it can be difficult to pick out important sounds, such as a doorbell or a fire alarm. A new smartwatch system called SoundWatch identifies sounds and alerts users to them with a buzz and a visual readout.

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed an autonomous robot arm that can figure out the best way to pick up food of any shape and bring it up to a user’s mouth, which should make mealtimes easier for people with limited mobility.

​Jack Skopinski's rivet-packing electric trikes and four-wheelers like to tilt. It's become something of a signature for EV4 machines. But now the Polish engineer has created an off-road electric trail hugger that doesn't sport a tilting mechanism – the EV4 Mountain Cart.​

Toyota has reached a new landmark in its Partner Robot project with the successful completion of the first North American in-home trial of the Human Support Robot, a bot developed to help people with a disability carry out everyday activities.

Researchers have revealed two new additions to a host of ride-on toy car designs produced by the Go Baby Go program. One battery-powered mover encourages late bloomers to rise up and take charge, while the other gets kids in on the throwing game action.

​While most of us use smartphones, tablets or computers with relative ease, doing so can be very difficult for people with upper-body mobility issues. Paired with assistive switches, Komodo OpenLab's Tecla-e lets users control up to eight smart devices at once.

Researchers in Japan say that they've broken new ground with machines that can read out minds, developing a technology that can recognize Japanese words and also guess the single-digit number on a subject's mind with 90 percent accuracy.

​3D-printing has been used to great effect in the development of prosthetic aids, patient-tailored​​ medical devices and body parts. Now, Eliza Wrobel has used additive manufacturing to make the humble walker even more useful for those suffering from limb disabilities who want to stay active.

Your average family home isn't very easy for a disabled person to get around. With this in mind, Wheel Pad has designed an eponymous tiny house that provides a wheelchair-friendly bedroom and bathroom on wheels suitable for use as an annex or accessory dwelling unit.

On the basis that many hotel rooms for the disabled aren't that accessible, can be poorly fitted and have overly clinical designs, two firms have collaborated to create a new hotel room concept. AllGo is an approach aimed at creating accessible ​rooms that are functional, flexible and beautiful.

Aimed at those suffering from afflictions like cerebral palsy and Huntington's disease​, the Liftware Level is a motorized utensil that flexes to compensate for a user's restricted movement so as to keep the utensil head level.