“Assistive technology has changed my life”

Molly now uses technology to assist her in everyday life – much of it created by Apple. She explained that thanks to her hearing aids she is “able to communicate”, but that’s not all: her digital hearing aids feature smart technology linked to an app that enables her to control her hearing through her iPhone.

“If I’m in a restaurant and it’s really busy, I can bring out my phone, make a few adjustments, reduce background noise and focus on the person in front of me,” she explained. “Before I turned 20 I hadn’t been able to make a phone call. Now when it rings I can put on loudspeaker and talk to my grandad who lives four hours away, all via Bluetooth technology.”

What’s more, if her hearing aids start playing up, Molly no longer needs to visit her audiologist. Instead she sends a report of what’s going wrong to an external audiologist via her iPhone. They send back an update, which, when scanned to the hearing aids, reprogrammes them and fixes the problems.

Molly also uses an Apple watch featuring a camera and accessibility tools that enable her to keep track of who is visiting her at home. The camera picks up motion and notifies Molly when someone is at her door via her watch or iPhone. She is then able to zoom in using the accessibility tools to see who it is, or answer via the technology and ask who it is. This enables her to live more independently.

Molly rounded off her talk by saying: “Without my tools I wouldn’t feel safe, independent or confident. Accessibility is my life, which is why I consult on accessibility and usability. Everything comes back to digital and technology, because that is the way the world goes now – everybody is online.”

It’s easy to agree with this statement, and the experiences of many people with disabilities in high income countries are likely to be the same. Yet in many of the low and middle income countries where Sightsavers works, technology is still not readily available to assist disabled people to live their lives with dignity and independence.

This is where we need to make progress: to close the accessibility gap so affordable assistive devices are available to all.

Author

Kate Bennell is the organisational inclusion coordinator at Sightsavers UK. Severely sight impaired herself, she coordinates the Social Inclusion Working Group and champions accessibility.
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