Current research on collaborative robots (cobots) in physical rehabilitation largely focuses on repeated motion training for people undergoing physical therapy (PuPT), even though these sessions include phases that could benefit from robotic collaboration and assistance. Meanwhile, access to physical therapy remains limited for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Cobots could support both PuPT and therapists, and improve access to therapy, yet their broader potential remains underexplored. We propose extending the scope of cobots by imagining their role in assisting therapists and PuPT before, during, and after a therapy session. We discuss how cobot assistance may lift access barriers by promoting ability-based therapy design and helping therapists manage their time and effort. Finally, we highlight challenges to realizing these roles, including advancing user-state understanding, ensuring safety, and integrating cobots into therapists' workflow. This view opens new research questions and opportunities to draw from the HRI community's advances in assistive robotics.
Yvonne Nell, Alta Kritzinger, Marien A.N. Graham
et al.
Background: Autistic learners benefit from demonstrating academic knowledge with the help of assessment accommodations, guided by South African examination policies, such as the National Policy Pertaining to the Conduct, Administration and Management of Examinations and Assessment for the National Senior Certificate Examination. However, stakeholder perspectives on accommodations remain under-explored.
Objectives: This study explored stakeholder perspectives (autistic adults, caregivers, educators, psychologists, speech-language therapists and occupational therapists) on assessment accommodations for autistic learners in South African schools.
Method: A web-based questionnaire was distributed nationally to professionals and caregivers (n = 92). Quantitative data were analysed descriptively, and qualitative responses were thematically coded.
Results: Stakeholders reported a persistent policy-practice disconnect, with educators lacking the knowledge of accommodation policies, as well as the training to implement accommodations, particularly for autistic learners. Similarly, current policies do not adequately accommodate the needs related to sensory regulation and anxiety. Considerable variability emerged in accommodation preferences, reflecting both the heterogeneity of autistic learners and the differences across stakeholder groups. Respondents also prioritised universal design elements such as simplified language, redundancy and clearer assessment layouts, which are not currently considered in South African policy. Overall, findings highlight the need for expanded and individually tailored assessment accommodations informed by diverse stakeholder input.
Conclusion: The findings highlight a disconnect between policy and practice. Broader autism-specific accommodations are crucial to support equitable assessment conditions in South African schools, especially for learners with sensory and communication challenges.
Contribution: This study provides insight into stakeholder experiences and suggests that current assessment policies may inadvertently exclude autistic learners. The findings support the need for inclusive, contextually relevant assessment strategies. The contribution aligns with the focus of the journal on disability inclusion by advancing evidence-based recommendations that promote full participation of neurodivergent learners in education systems, particularly within under-resourced and diverse settings.
Vocational rehabilitation. Employment of people with disabilities, Communities. Classes. Races
Lily Freedman, Megan Millenky, Charles Michalopoulos
Background Adults with disabilities often struggle to find stable employment in the general labor market. One promising approach for this group is the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model, which was designed for people with serious mental illness and has had large effects on employment for that group. IPS has been studied among other groups of job seekers, but research limitations have made it difficult to determine for which specific groups it is effective. Objective To present findings from an impact evaluation of the Breaking Barriers program, which delivered IPS services to people with a range of self-identified disabilities. Methods 1,061 people were randomly assigned and enrolled in the study (528 to a program group and 533 to a control group). Results Breaking Barriers substantially increased earnings over a two-year follow-up period and increased employment in the first of those two years. Conclusions Evidence of the effectiveness on employment outcomes is consistent with other literature on IPS. Given that the effects of the Breaking Barriers program had diminished substantially by the end of the second year, future research could follow individuals over a longer follow-up period to determine whether effects can be sustained over an extended time horizon.
Background There is substantial research evidence to suggest that supported employment is an evidence-based mental health and employment intervention for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and persons with severe mental illness (SMI). The effectiveness of supported employment may also extend to people recovering from addiction because alcohol and substance use disorder is considered a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR). However, there is a paucity of research validating the effectiveness of supported employment for individuals recovering from addiction. Objective This study examined the effect of supported employment on the employment outcomes of individuals recovering from addiction in the state vocational rehabilitation system. Method We conducted a case-control study using propensity score matching to create a treatment group (individuals recovering from addiction who received supported employment) and a control group (individuals recovering from addiction who did not receive supported employment), using data extracted from the Rehabilitation Services Administration Case Service Report database. Chi-square tests and t-tests were computed to determine if there were any differences between the treatment and control groups on employment outcomes and quality of employment. Results Individuals recovering from addiction in the treatment group had significantly higher employment rates than those in the control group. Conclusion Supported employment is an effective employment intervention for individuals recovering from addiction receiving services from the state vocational rehabilitation system.
Vidya Venkatesan, Aomawa L. Shields, Russell Deitrick
et al.
Eccentric planets may spend a significant portion of their orbits at large distances from their host stars, where low temperatures can cause atmospheric CO2 to condense out onto the surface, similar to the polar ice caps on Mars. The radiative effects on the climates of these planets throughout their orbits would depend on the wavelength-dependent albedo of surface CO2 ice that may accumulate at or near apoastron and vary according to the spectral energy distribution of the host star. To explore these possible effects, we incorporated a CO2 ice-albedo parameterization into a one-dimensional energy balance climate model. With the inclusion of this parameterization, our simulations demonstrated that F-dwarf planets require 29% more orbit-averaged flux to thaw out of global water ice cover compared with simulations that solely use a traditional pure water ice-albedo parameterization. When no eccentricity is assumed, and host stars are varied, F-dwarf planets with higher bond albedos relative to their M-dwarf planet counterparts require 30% more orbit-averaged flux to exit a water snowball state. Additionally, the intense heat experienced at periastron aids eccentric planets in exiting a snowball state with a smaller increase in instellation compared with planets on circular orbits; this enables eccentric planets to exhibit warmer conditions along a broad range of instellation. This study emphasizes the significance of incorporating an albedo parameterization for the formation of CO2 ice into climate models to accurately assess the habitability of eccentric planets, as we show that, even at moderate eccentricities, planets with Earth-like atmospheres can reach surface temperatures cold enough for the condensation of CO2 onto their surfaces, as can planets receiving low amounts of instellation on circular orbits.
Gábor Baranyi, Zsolt Csibi, Kristian Fenech
et al.
This paper introduces the Ambient Intelligence Rehabilitation Support (AIRS) framework, an advanced artificial intelligence-based solution tailored for home rehabilitation environments. AIRS integrates cutting-edge technologies, including Real-Time 3D Reconstruction (RT-3DR), intelligent navigation, and large Vision-Language Models (VLMs), to create a comprehensive system for machine-guided physical rehabilitation. The general AIRS framework is demonstrated in rehabilitation scenarios following total knee replacement (TKR), utilizing a database of 263 video recordings for evaluation. A smartphone is employed within AIRS to perform RT-3DR of living spaces and has a body-matched avatar to provide visual feedback about the excercise. This avatar is necessary in (a) optimizing exercise configurations, including camera placement, patient positioning, and initial poses, and (b) addressing privacy concerns and promoting compliance with the AI Act. The system guides users through the recording process to ensure the collection of properly recorded videos. AIRS employs two feedback mechanisms: (i) visual 3D feedback, enabling direct comparisons between prerecorded clinical exercises and patient home recordings and (ii) VLM-generated feedback, providing detailed explanations and corrections for exercise errors. The framework also supports people with visual and hearing impairments. It also features a modular design that can be adapted to broader rehabilitation contexts. AIRS software components are available for further use and customization.
Vision-Language Models (VLMs) are increasingly used by blind and low-vision (BLV) people to identify and understand products in their everyday lives, such as food, personal care items, and household goods. Despite their prevalence, we lack an empirical understanding of how common image quality issues--such as blur, misframing, and rotation--affect the accuracy of VLM-generated captions and whether the resulting captions meet BLV people's information needs. Based on a survey of 86 BLV participants, we develop an annotated dataset of 1,859 product images from BLV people to systematically evaluate how image quality issues affect VLM-generated captions. While the best VLM achieves 98% accuracy on images with no quality issues, accuracy drops to 75% overall when quality issues are present, worsening considerably as issues compound. We discuss the need for model evaluations that center on disabled people's experiences throughout the process and offer concrete recommendations for HCI and ML researchers to make VLMs more reliable for BLV people.
Despite the rise in affordable eXtended Reality (XR) technologies, accessibility still remains a key concern, often excluding people with disabilities from accessing these immersive XR platforms. Consequently, there has been a notable surge in HCI research on creating accessible XR solutions (also known as, assistive XR). This increased focus in assistive XR research is also reflected in the number of research and innovative solutions submitted at the ACM Conference on Accessible Computing (ASSETS), with an aim to make XR experiences inclusive for disabled communities. However, till date, there is little to no work that provides a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art research in assistive XR for disability at ACM ASSETS, a premier conference dedicated for research in HCI for people with disabilities. This study aims to fill this research gap by conducting a scoping review of literature delineating the key focus areas, research methods, statistical and temporal trends in XR research for disability at ACM ASSETS (2019-2023). From a pool of 1595 articles submitted to ASSETS, 26 articles are identified that specifically focus on XR research for disability. Through a detailed analysis, 6 key focus areas of XR research explored at ACM ASSETS are identified and a detailed examination of each is provided. Additionally, an overview of multiple research methods employed for XR research at ASSETS is also presented. Lastly, this work reports on the statistics and temporal trends regarding the number of publications, XR technologies used, disabilities addressed, and methodologies adopted for assistive XR research at ASSETS, highlighting emerging trends and possible future research directions.
Education about epilepsy plays a vital role in reducing stigma, improving seizure response, and preventing school dropout among affected learners. Despite this importance, there is a lack of a structured conceptual framework guiding epilepsy education in primary schools, where children’s foundational learning and social development take place. This study aims to develop a conceptual framework that integrates epilepsy education into the life skills curriculum to reduce epilepsy-related stigma from an early age. A qualitative multi-methods approach was employed during the empirical phase, which was conducted in two stages using an exploratory–descriptive design. Data were collected from teachers, life skills education advisors (LEAs), and learners to explore their views on incorporating epilepsy education into the life skills curriculum of primary schools. The findings informed the development of a conceptual framework guided by the Three-Legged Stool Model and Dickoff’s Practice-Oriented Theory. This educational framework is tailored for primary school settings and highlights the roles of learners and teachers in promoting self-esteem through knowledge acquisition, value formation, and skill development, all underpinned by the Ubuntu philosophy.
Vocational rehabilitation. Employment of people with disabilities
Rehab M. El-Sayed, Eman Saad Alamri, Mohamed H. ElSayed
et al.
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common psychiatric disorder that affects individuals across all age groups, including children, adolescents, and adults. The ADHD etiology encompasses a lack of several nutrients and food compositions. Some applied strategies, such as increased intake of specific nutrients, were proposed as additional therapy for this condition. In our narrative review, we explored the relationship between dietary patterns and ADHD by searching through “Google Scholar, Scopus, and PubMed” for relevant studies. This review sheds light on the connection between dietary patterns and ADHD and provides a concise summary about practicing these dietary therapies. Several studies reported that unhealthy eating habits were positively correlated with ADHD, while healthy eating habits showed a negative correlation. Furthermore, there is a potential association between ADHD and deficiency in certain nutrients, including magnesium, iron, zinc, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and vitamin D. However, despite the promising nature of the dietary modifications as strategies for managing ADHD, the need for more robust scientific evidence to validate their effectiveness is highly recommended.
Vocational rehabilitation. Employment of people with disabilities
This article investigates the nexus between artificial intelligence (AI) and employment for people with disabilities, emphasizing the moderating role of governance quality across economic, political, and institutional dimensions. Using panel data from 25 developed countries (2010-2022), the study examines both linear (direct) and nonlinear (complex) effects of AI on employment rates, measured by annual patent applications and industrial robots. The findings reveal that AI initially reduces employment, but its effects diminish and eventually reverse beyond critical adoption thresholds. Gendered differences emerge, with men with disabilities experiencing stronger negative impacts due to their higher concentration in automation-prone industries, while women with disabilities face smaller but still significant effects. Economic governance—through effective policies and regulatory frameworks—mitigates AI’s adverse effects on employment by fostering regulatory environments that promote workforce adaptability and inclusion. Institutional governance—including the rule of law and control of corruption—reinforces these efforts by ensuring fair labor policies and legal protections that safeguard employment opportunities for people with disabilities, thereby reducing the risks associated with AI-driven job displacement. However, political governance shows no significant influence. These findings underscore the importance of integrating AI adoption with strong economic and institutional governance frameworks, which are essential for moderating AI’s impact and shaping inclusive workforce opportunities for people with disabilities.
Vocational rehabilitation. Employment of people with disabilities
Of the record high 122.6 million people forcibly displaced worldwide, about 43.4 million are refugees, and an estimated 15% to 33% have at least one type of disability. Due to structural racism and ableism, many refugees with disabilities find it difficult to access vocational rehabilitation/employment resources, assistive technologies, and educational opportunities, including English as a second language classes. Although these services are not typically considered health care, they are critically important for the overall well-being of refugees with disabilities. To address these challenges, a U.S.-based research team and two project advisory boards developed a multilingual program that employed a community-based participatory approach. The primary goal of the program was to support disabled refugees with limited English proficiency by helping them navigate systems and gain access to vital services. Centering on human rights and driven by multisector partnerships, Partners of Refugees in Illinois Disability Employment (PRIDE), a federally funded program, aimed to: (1) increase resource awareness among refugees with disabilities through a linguistically appropriate, rights-based employment-training program and (2) build the capacity of service providers to support refugee clients with disabilities through customized online trainings on disability awareness and related resources. This article examines barriers and facilitators encountered by 50 refugees with disabilities who participated in PRIDE as they pursued short- and long-term life goals, including gaining access to health-, disability-, and workforce-related resources. Findings are based on data gathered through interviews, person-centered career planning sessions, and pre- and post-knowledge surveys. These findings can inform policy and programmatic changes to better support refugees with disabilities.
More and more smart devices enter our homes. Often these devices come with a variety of sensors, mostly simple sensors, e.g., for light, temperature, humidity or motion. And they all collect data. While it is data of the home environment it is also data of domestic life in the home. Thus it is data of the people and by the people in the home capturing their presence, arrival and departure, typical domestic activities, bad habits, health status etc. Based on previous as well as ongoing research we know that people are actually able to make sense of simple sensor data and that they will make use of it for their own purposes. Simple sensors, when critically reflected, are often only "simple" in a technical sense. The unreflected design and use of these sensors can easily lead to unintended implications, i.e. for privacy. However, it may not even need a Big Brother or data experts or AI to make the data of these sensors sensitive, e.g., if used for lateral surveillance within families. Often unintended but wicked implications emerge despite good intentions, such as improving efficiency or energy saving through collecting sensor data. Thus sensor data from the home is actually data of/by/for the people in the home. First, we explain how this might have relevance across scales of community of people - not only for the domain of the home but also in broader meaning. Second, we relate our previous as well as ongoing research in the domain of smart homes to this topic.
Howard Ziyu Han, Franklin Mingzhe Li, Alesandra Baca Vazquez
et al.
Sidewalk robots are increasingly common across the globe. Yet, their operation on public paths poses challenges for people with mobility disabilities (PwMD) who face barriers to accessibility, such as insufficient curb cuts. We interviewed 15 PwMD to understand how they perceive sidewalk robots. Findings indicated that PwMD feel they have to compete for space on the sidewalk when robots are introduced. We next interviewed eight robotics practitioners to learn about their attitudes towards accessibility. Practitioners described how issues often stem from robotic companies addressing accessibility only after problems arise. Both interview groups underscored the importance of integrating accessibility from the outset. Building on this finding, we held four co-design workshops with PwMD and practitioners in pairs. These convenings brought to bear accessibility needs around robots operating in public spaces and in the public interest. Our study aims to set the stage for a more inclusive future around public service robots.
Anuradha Madugalla, Yutan Huang, John Grundy
et al.
Most software applications contain graphics such as charts, diagrams and maps. Currently, these graphics are designed with a ``one size fits all" approach and do not cater to the needs of people with disabilities. Therefore, when using software with graphics, a colour-impaired user may struggle to interpret graphics with certain colours, and a person with dyslexia may struggle to read the text labels in the graphic. Our research addresses this issue by developing a framework that generates adaptive and accessible information graphics for multiple disabilities. Uniquely, the approach also serves people with multiple simultaneous disabilities. To achieve these, we used a case study of public space floorplans presented via a web tool and worked with four disability groups: people with low vision, colour blindness, dyslexia and mobility impairment. Our research involved gathering requirements from 3 accessibility experts and 80 participants with disabilities, developing a system to generate adaptive graphics that address the identified requirements, and conducting an evaluation with 7 participants with disabilities. The evaluation showed that users found our solution easy to use and suitable for most of their requirements. The study also provides recommendations for front-end developers on engineering accessible graphics for their software and discusses the implications of our work on society from the perspective of public space owners and end users.
Valentin Hofmann, Pratyusha Ria Kalluri, Dan Jurafsky
et al.
Hundreds of millions of people now interact with language models, with uses ranging from serving as a writing aid to informing hiring decisions. Yet these language models are known to perpetuate systematic racial prejudices, making their judgments biased in problematic ways about groups like African Americans. While prior research has focused on overt racism in language models, social scientists have argued that racism with a more subtle character has developed over time. It is unknown whether this covert racism manifests in language models. Here, we demonstrate that language models embody covert racism in the form of dialect prejudice: we extend research showing that Americans hold raciolinguistic stereotypes about speakers of African American English and find that language models have the same prejudice, exhibiting covert stereotypes that are more negative than any human stereotypes about African Americans ever experimentally recorded, although closest to the ones from before the civil rights movement. By contrast, the language models' overt stereotypes about African Americans are much more positive. We demonstrate that dialect prejudice has the potential for harmful consequences by asking language models to make hypothetical decisions about people, based only on how they speak. Language models are more likely to suggest that speakers of African American English be assigned less prestigious jobs, be convicted of crimes, and be sentenced to death. Finally, we show that existing methods for alleviating racial bias in language models such as human feedback training do not mitigate the dialect prejudice, but can exacerbate the discrepancy between covert and overt stereotypes, by teaching language models to superficially conceal the racism that they maintain on a deeper level. Our findings have far-reaching implications for the fair and safe employment of language technology.
Objective: Employment is a major area of life for adults, including people with disabilities. The aim of our study is to understand the conditions and support opportunities that determine the career paths of people with hearing impairment in the labour market. The search was conducted in March 2024, and the articles covered 7 different countries.
Methods: We conducted a systematic review by searching the Web of Science, Elsevier, and EBSCO databases for relevant citations from 2006. We chose this date because of the advent of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD), which has contributed to a major paradigm shift in the social inclusion and integration of persons with disabilities, including those with hearing impairments.
The focus of the search was on career orientation, career guidance, lifelong guidance and vocational rehabilitation of people with hearing impairment. The authors summarise the results of 14 studies that met the objectives of the study.
Results: We have chosen seven different focal points for the content analyses of the articles. The legal framework for employment is adequate in the surveyed countries. The successful retention of people with hearing impairment in the workplace, whether congenital or acquired, requires not only a change in the environmental conditions, but also a supportive attitude on the part of the employee, the colleagues and the bosses.
Discussion: Our systematic review has identified the most important aspects influencing the subjective situation and objective circumstances of hearing-impaired individuals, as well as the services available to support their integration into the labour market. Overall, the medical, social and human rights models of disability can be seen in the way individual aspects and services operate.
Megan J. Baumunk, Xiao-Yang Tang, Stuart P. Rumrill
et al.
BACKGROUND: Trauma has high prevalence rates in populations of people with disabilities, and the effects of traumatic experiences can negatively impact employment. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to review the existing literature regarding post-traumatic growth (PTG), trauma informed care (TIC), and the conservation of resources (COR) theory. METHOD: We begin with an overview of PTG, TIC, and trauma in relation to disability and employment. Then, we review the personal, condition, object, and energy resources within the COR theory. RESULTS: The remainder of the article focuses on applying PTG and TIC in state-Federal VR programs with a theoretical framework defined by COR. We conceptualize the application in four major VR phases: (a) eligibility determination, (b) rehabilitation plan development, (c) service provision, and (d) job placement. CONCLUSION: By implementing TIC and considering the consumer’s resources, VR counselors can help emphasize PTG throughout the process and prioritize PTG as the ultimate goal. The authors provide brief and preliminary implementation recommendations for VR counselors.
The aim of this chapter is to identify and characterise the pedagogical model prescribed for this particular mathematics teaching delivered in post-primary vocational training. More specifically, the contribution investigates two major questions: what specificities, proximities, differences with the pedagogical models of mathematics teaching for elementary primary and secondary? How should this mathematics teaching be operationalised, particularly with regard to the specific characteristics of the public for whom it is intended?