Citation
Abbott, C. (2016), "Editorial", Journal of Assistive Technologies, Vol. 10 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/JAT-01-2016-0005
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Assistive Technologies, Volume 10, Issue 1.
We begin our tenth year of publication with a selection of articles from the UK, the USA and Korea. We include three peer-reviewed papers, starting with an article from Matthew Oppenheim at the School of Computing and Communication, Lancaster University. The paper outlines a method for interacting with a computer using head movement, but without the need to wear a device. The aim was to reduce fatigue by enabling a less tiring method of control. This is followed by a paper which surveys multimodal and alternative perception for the visually impaired, from two Computer Science researchers at City College, New York, USA. Wai Lun Khoo and Zhigang Zhu analysed a range of multimodal assistive technologies in order to find the most popular sensors and actuators, in the expectation that this would be helpful to others working in this area. Our third peer-reviewed paper in this issue comes from the University of Nebraska, also in the United States. Silvana Trimi from the Management department of the University writes here with two colleagues from Korea, Soon Goo Hong and Dong Wan Kim, both based at Dong-A University in Busan. The team investigated the use by older people of smartphones to access the internet in Korea, a country with one of the most developed ICT infrastructures anywhere in the world. The researchers then went on to consider the factors that may affect the extent to which smartphones are used for internet access by this group, and found that two of the key factors were levels of education and experience of using smartphones.
We also include in this issue two opinion papers from JAT Associate Editor Kevin Doughty, writing with different co-authors. Kevin is based at CUHTec at the University of York, and writes first with Alastair Appleby from Optalis, in a paper considering the use of wearable devices to support rehabilitation and social care. In his second opinion piece for this issue, Kevin Doughty writes with Gareth Williams from T-Cubed Ltd. The topic this time is a discussion of possible new models for the assessment and prescription of smart assistive living technologies in order to provide personalised support for older and disabled people, with the aim of increasing the effectiveness of the process of matching need to technology.
Chris Abbott