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The History of Assistive Technology

In the early years of the 20th century, there were fewer older adults and disabled individuals and very few means of helping them cope with their limitations. According to the Center For Universal Design at North Carolina State University, the average human lifespan has increased from 47 years in 1900 to 76 years today. Assistive technology has developed and evolved with the times to meet the growing demand for improved access.

  1. Assistive Technology Defined

    • Assistive technology has gone far beyond sign language to aid in communication.

      Assistive technology encompasses all devices developed to assist disabled individuals with performing tasks that might otherwise be difficult or impossible for them to achieve. This technology can encompass mobility devices such as walkers, wheelchairs and electric scooters as well as communicative equipment such as hardware, software and peripherals to assist the visual, hearing, speaking and motion impaired populace. The history of assistive technology is not a long one, but the rate of change it continues to generate is truly remarkable.

    Early AssistiveTechnology

    • As long as a need has existed, mankind has endeavored to meet the needs of disabled people through invention. In 1808, Pellegrino Turri of Italy built the first typewriter for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzono to help her write legibly. Alexander Graham Bell developed ways to reach the deaf in the 1870s. Bell's patent for the telephone, which was a byproduct of his studies with the hearing impaired, was granted in 1876.

    The 20th Century

    • Many useful devices came out of the Bell labs in subsequent years. In 1917, E.C. Wente developed the condenser microphone which translated sound waves into electrical waves, allowing them to be transmitted by a vacuum tube amplifier. Harvey Fletcher introduced the Western Electric Model 2A hearing aid and binaural headset in the 1920s. An artificial talking machine or "voice coder" was developed by H.W. Dudley working for Bell labs in 1936. Walter B. Shockley and Walter H. Brattain followed with the transistor in 1948 while Davis, Biddulph and Balasek introduced the first speech recognition device in 1952.

    Legislative Advocacy

    • Government recognized the need to provide technology for the disabled with the passing of the Disabilities Act of 1988. The act was amended in 1994 and repealed and replaced in 1998 with the Assistive Technology Act of 1998. Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards were devised as ordered by the 1998 amendments to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Societal attitudes toward the disabled were changing and their rights were being enshrined in law.

    Computer Aided Devices

    • The 1990s provided greater accessibility for the disabled than ever before. Voice activated telephones, large button computer keypads and speaking websites appeared on the scene. In 1997, NCR began to provide audio ATMs to assist the visually impaired with their banking. By 1999, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

      encouraged the development of websites that could be accessed by regular telephones and simplified content for the cognitively impaired. Today, rehabilitation engineers continue to design for universal access to assistive technology.

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