Predicting adoption of the assistive technology open platform: extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology.

PURPOSE: The Assistive Technology (AT) Open Platform supports people with disabilities, older people, and developers in co-creating new assistive products outside the business realm. To address dissatisfaction with and non-adoption of commercial assistive products, the National Rehabilitation Centre in South Korea created an AT Open Platform as an open-source AT sharing platform to research and develop appropriate assistive technology suitable for users' needs. The emerging concept of AT Open Platform is new for both assistive product users and developers in South Korea. The Extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) was utilised to understand the factors influencing the adoption of the AT Open Platform and to gain further insights on its design and future use. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Interviews were conducted with six potential AT Open Platform users to develop a questionnaire for predicting behavioural intention. Subsequently, we surveyed 175 potential users to validate the UTAUT2. RESULTS: The results revealed that behavioural intention was significantly predicted by social influence, performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, and hedonic motivation. CONCLUSIONS: The AT Open Platform should focus on both online and offline platforms to educate and facilitate the co-creation of ATs for assistive product users and makers. This study, which targeted assistive product users and developers, has significant implications for policymakers and future research in using and adopting the AT Open Platform as it reflects the actual voices of the platform's stakeholders.

To address the issues of dissatisfaction and non-adoption of commercial assistive products, assistive technology platforms are established for the research and development of appropriate assistive technologies suitable for meeting user needs; the results are shared as open-source assistive technology.A survey was conducted with a targeted sample of assistive technology product users and developers. The study results are significant as they represent the perspectives of key stakeholders in the assistive technology platform. The study findings are expected to play an important role in the application and diffusion of the assistive technology platform in South Korea.The survey is the first to illuminate the adoption of an assistive technology platform in South Korea and is an important step towards empowering people with disabilities.

Requirements for Universally Accessible Upper-Body Exercise Equipment: The Case of People with Spinal Cord Injuries in Korea.

Background: People with disabilities face considerable obstacles when exercising, which precludes them from the social and health benefits of physical activity. Especially for individuals with paraplegia with spinal cord injuries, it is necessary to maintain continuous participation in physical activity even after discharge, as it helps to maintain mobility and daily living activities through upper body strength. However, the participation rate of people with disabilities in physical activity in Korea is still low, mainly due to the lack of exercise equipment and facilities. Objectives: The aim of this study is to identify aspects that can be improved for better accessibility to exercise equipment for individuals with paraplegia with spinal cord injuries and to reach a consensus on possible guidelines for accessible exercise equipment. Methods: This study reviews and evaluated the usability of four existing upper-body exercise equipment for individuals with paraplegia with spinal cord injuries. To assess usability, task performance scores and time were measured, and a survey was conducted on safety and satisfaction. Based on these results, areas for improvement were identified. Through literature review, usability results, and opinions from various stakeholders, eight requirements for universal accessibility were proposed. Results: It is necessary to consider how wheelchair users access the exercise equipment. The access method to the exercise area (facility regulations, auxiliary equipment to be provided, etc.) and placement of exercise equipment should also be considered. Information such as explanations of the exercise equipment and how to use it should be located within the wheelchair user's field of vision. Considering the participation rate in sports for people with disabilities in Korea, it is necessary to explain the exact exercise equipment and exercise method. It is also necessary to consider how wheelchair users transfer from the wheelchair to the seat of the exercise equipment. Parts that require manipulation of each exercise equipment must be within the wheelchair user's range of motion. Various supports or assistive devices that provide body support according to each piece of equipment are needed. In addition to the wheelchair's own brake, it is necessary to provide a fixing device so that the wheelchair does not move during the exercise. Conclusion: For people with spinal cord injuries, the arm ergometer, aerobic exercise equipment, showed higher scores in performance, stability, and satisfaction compared to other exercise equipment. Among the strength exercise equipment, shoulder press had an effect on performance, seated lat pull-down had an effect on stability, and seated chest press had an effect on satisfaction. Therefore, when selecting exercise equipment, it is necessary to recommend aerobic and strength exercise equipment according to the preferences of people with spinal cord injuries. When developing strength exercise equipment, it is necessary to consider usability evaluation factors for individuals with spinal cord injury.

An emergency call system for patients in locked-in state using an SSVEP-based brain switch.

Patients in a locked-in state (LIS) due to severe neurological disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) require seamless emergency care by their caregivers or guardians. However, it is a difficult job for the guardians to continuously monitor the patients' state, especially when direct communication is not possible. In the present study, we developed an emergency call system for such patients using a steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain switch. Although there have been previous studies to implement SSVEP-based brain switch system, they have not been applied to patients in LIS, and thus their clinical value has not been validated. In this study, we verified whether the SSVEP-based brain switch system can be practically used as an emergency call system for patients in LIS. The brain switch used for our system adopted a chromatic visual stimulus, which proved to be visually less stimulating than conventional checkerboard-type stimuli but could generate SSVEP responses strong enough to be used for brain-computer interface (BCI) applications. To verify the feasibility of our emergency call system, 14 healthy participants and 3 patients with severe ALS took part in online experiments. All three ALS patients successfully called their guardians to their bedsides in about 6.56 seconds. Furthermore, additional experiments with one of these patients demonstrated that our emergency call system maintains fairly good performance even up to 4 weeks after the first experiment without renewing initial calibration data. Our results suggest that our SSVEP-based emergency call system might be successfully used in practical scenarios.

Clinical feasibility of brain-computer interface based on steady-state visual evoked potential in patients with locked-in syndrome: Case studies.

Although the feasibility of brain-computer interface (BCI) systems based on steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) has been extensively investigated, only a few studies have evaluated its clinical feasibility in patients with locked-in syndrome (LIS), who are the main targets of BCI technology. The main objective of this case report was to share our experiences of SSVEP-based BCI experiments involving five patients with LIS, thereby providing researchers with useful information that can potentially help them to design BCI experiments for patients with LIS. In our experiments, a four-class online SSVEP-based BCI system was implemented and applied to four of five patients repeatedly on multiple days to investigate its test-retest reliability. In the last experiments with two of the four patients, the practical usability of our BCI system was tested using a questionnaire survey. All five patients showed clear and distinct SSVEP responses at all four fundamental stimulation frequencies (6, 6.66, 7.5, 10 Hz), and responses at harmonic frequencies were also observed in three patients. Mean classification accuracy was 76.99% (chance level = 25%). The test-retest reliability experiments demonstrated stable performance of our BCI system over different days even when the initial experimental settings (e.g., electrode configuration, fixation time, visual angle) used in the first experiment were used without significant modifications. Our results suggest that SSVEP-based BCI paradigms might be successfully used to implement clinically feasible BCI systems for severely paralyzed patients.

Assessment criteria for MEG/EEG cortical patch tests.

To validate newly developed methods or implemented software for magnetoencephalography/electroencephalography (MEG/EEG) source localization problems, many researchers have used human skull phantom experiments or artificially constructed forward data sets. Between the two methods, the use of an artificial data set constructed with forward calculation attains superiority over the use of a human skull phantom in that it is simple to implement, adjust and control various conditions. Nowadays, for the forward calculation, especially for the cortically distributed source models, generating artificial activation patches on a brain cortical surface has been popularized instead of activating some point dipole sources. However, no well-established assessment criterion to validate the reconstructed results quantitatively has yet been introduced. In this paper, we suggest some assessment criteria to compare and validate the various MEG/EEG source localization techniques or implemented software applied to the cortically distributed source model. Four different criteria can be used to measure accuracy, degrees of focalization, noise-robustness, existence of spurious sources and so on. To verify the usefulness of the proposed criteria, four different results from two different noise conditions and two different reconstruction techniques were compared for several patches. The simulated results show that the new criteria can provide us with a reliable index to validate the MEG/EEG source localization techniques.