An advanced look at smart technology to promote the independence of the elderly and disabled Ongoing research and advancements in technology are essential for the continuing independence of elderly and disabled persons. The Engineering Handbook of Smart Technology for Aging, Disability, and Independence provides a thorough analysis of these technologies and the needs of the elderly and disabled, including a breakdown of demographics, government spending, growth rate, and much more. Each chapter is written by an expert in his or her respective field, and gives readers unparalleled insight into the research and developments in a multitude of important areas, including: User-need analyses, classifications, and policies Assistive devices and systems for people with motor disabilities Assistive devices and systems for people with visual and hearing impairments Human-machine interaction and virtual reality Assistive robotics Technology for user mobility and object manipulation Smart homes as assistant environments A discussion of emerging standards and guidelines to build accessible devices, tools, and environments This book is an indispensable resource for researchers and professionals in computer science, rehabilitation science, and clinical engineering. It also serves as a valuable textbook for graduate students in the aforementioned fields.

Successful transition from school to adult life has always been difficult for people with disabilities, especially in the area of employment. The vast majority of people with disabilities are either unemployed or underemployed with low wages and few benefits, and many governments are struggling to find a way of providing employment and benefits to people with disabilities without creating disincentives to work. This book provides strategies and ideas for improving the lives of people with disabilities, exploring new ways of enabling a successful transition to an integrated adult working life by providing effective instruction and support. Following an introduction which outlines the importance of transition services and meaningful outcomes, topics covered in the remaining chapters include: Person Centered Transition Planning; Enhancing Competence and Independence; Employment Assessment and Career Development; Collaboration between Agencies for a Seamless Transition; Independent Living and Supported Living; and Community Functioning Skills. The book will be of interest to all those who work with transition age students as well as those who work with adults with disabilities and want to enable them to have the best life possible. To paraphrase Helen Keller "people with disabilities not only need to be given lives, they need to be given lives worth living."

We are living in a world full of innovations for the elderly and people with special needs to use smart assistive technologies and smart homes to more easily perform activities of daily living, to continue in social participation, to engage in entertainment and leisure activities, and to enjoy living independently. These innovations are inspired by new technologies leveraging all aspects of ambient and pervasive intel- gence with related theories, technologies, methods, applications, and services on ub- uitous, pervasive, AmI, universal, mobile, embedded, wearable, augmented, invisible, hidden, context-aware, calm, amorphous, sentient, proactive, post–PC, everyday, autonomic computing from the engineering, business and organizational perspectives. In the field of smart homes and health telematics, significant research is underway to enable aging and disabled people to use smart assistive technologies and smart homes to foster independent living and to offer them an enhanced quality of life. A smart home is a vision of the future where computers and computing devices will be available naturally and unobtrusively anywhere, anytime, and by different means in our daily living, working, learning, business, and infotainment environments. Such a vision opens tremendous opportunities for numerous novel services/applications that are more immersive, more intelligent, and more interactive in both real and cyber spaces.

We live in a world with an abundance of technologies and the technologies are developing and improving rapidly. Technologies are transforming our lifestyles, social interactions, and workplaces. Nearly everyone in the developed nations possesses multiple electronic gadgets (cell phones, tablets, personal computers, laptops, digital notebooks, etc.). Daily use of technology has evolved. Recent advances in the field of technology have led to the emergence of innovative solutions known as smart technologies. A technology is considered smart if it performs a task that an intelligent person can do. A smart or intelligent technology is a self-operative and corrective system that requires little or no human intervention. Smart technologies can be understood as a generalization of the concept of smart structures and the use of digital and communications technologies. They have given us new, powerful tools to work. Application of such technologies can transform the conventional cities into smart cities, conventional home into smart home, conventional farming into smart farming, etc. Today, we are in an era where everything is expected to be smart. Common examples include smart cities, smart factory, smart agriculture, smart farming, smart healthcare, smart university, smart medication, smart water, smart food, smart materials, smart devices, smart phones, smart grid, smart energy, smart homes, smart buildings, smart metering, smart appliances, smart equipment, smart heating controls, smart lighting systems, smart watch, smart economy, smart environment, smart grids, smart transportation, smart mobility, smart manufacturing, smart living, smart environment, smart people, etc. These technologies will ensure equity, fairness, and realize a better quality of life. The combined autonomy and ambience of smart technologies simultaneously provides the conduit through which our choices are affected. These smart technologies go hand-in-hand with a new technology called the Internet of things (IoT).

The two LNCS volume set 9754-9755 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population, ITAP 2016, held as part of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2016, held in Toronto, ON, Canada, in July 2016, jointly with 14 other thematically conferences. The total of 1287 papers and 186 poster papers presented at the HCII 2016 conferences were carefully reviewed and selected from 4354 submissions. LNCS 9754, Design for Aging (Part I), addresses the following major topics: designing for and with the elderly; technology use and acceptance by older users; psychological and cognitive aspects of interaction and aging; mobile and wearable technologies for the elderly. LNCS 9755, Healthy and Active Aging (Part II), addresses these major topics: smart and assistive environments; aging and social media; aging, learning, training and games; and aging, mobility and driving.

This publication presents articles on Aging-in-Place, Assistive Technology, Monitoring and Telehealth, Transportation and Mobility, and Design. The section on assistive technology (AT) represents arguably the most mature and generic aspect of technology and aging; except that AT can hardly be regarded really as a specific discipline any longer. Assistive devices and systems command an expansive gamut of technological and engineering specialties, drawing upon mechanical engineering and industrial design at one end of the field and cybernetic systems engineering and brain-computer user interfaces at the other. The largest section in the book, on monitoring and telehealth, reveals novel applications of advanced pattern recognition techniques, some of which have, up to now, found roles primarily in the military, process engineering, and financial sectors. Transportation and mobility still represents by far the largest and most commercially lucrative market segment of technology for seniors. There is however a clear trend towards synthesis of information and communication technologies (ICT) and mobility technologies, which is embodied in the latest developments of automatic collision avoidance and full or semi-autonomous navigation functions in powered mobility devices. The last section is dedicated to design issues. It is proposed that designing for the special needs market before making a design as inclusive as possible to the mainstream market is a viable alternative to the currently accepted notion of inclusive design, provided that aesthetics are appropriately addressed. To conclude, we see a social shift from institutional to home-based care, in which information communication technology based solutions now afford the possibility of aging-in-place for the many thousands of people having mild to moderate cognitive impairment.

Part of the Oxford Textbooks in Clinical Neurology series, this textbook will provide the reader with an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of neurorehabilitation, as well as a clear idea about how (and why) to approach treatment decisions in individual patients.

A collaboration between leading scientists, practitioners, and researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, this book is a comprehensive resource describing Quality of Life technologies and their development, evaluation, adoption, and commercialization. It takes an interdisciplinary team approach to the process of tec

Demographics reveal that the proportion of elderly individuals in the population is growing at a significant rate. Advances in medicine have allowed populations to live longer than ever; however, ensuring that these individuals have the tools necessary to sustain a productive and happy lifestyle as they age remains a concern. Optimizing Assistive Technologies for Aging Populations focuses on the development and improvement of devices intended to assist elderly individuals in coping with various physical limitations and disabilities. Highlighting the available tools and technologies for supporting the mobility, agility, and self-sufficiency of the aging population as well as the challenges associated with the integration of these technologies into the everyday lives of elderly individuals, this publication is ideally designed for reference use by healthcare workers, medical students, gerontologists, and IT developers in the field of medicine.

This book provides an overview of systematic instructional strategies and is written in a format so that teachers and other service providers can immediately put the information to use. It specifically focuses upon systematic instruction for individuals with disabilities (school age and adults) and is generic across age groups as well as disability labels. The book focuses on improving instructional practices for students and adults with disabilities. Practitioners may understand the importance of placing individuals in different settings (e.g., inclusive classrooms, supported employment sites) but not understand how to improve their skills once they are in that setting. This book is intended to give teachers and other service providers the instructional skills for improving the skills of the individuals that they are serving. The most unique feature of the text is that it is written specifically for practitioners in the field (teachers and adult service providers) as well as those in training rather than being written for other academics. An advantage of this book is that those preparing teachers and others can easily use it in methods courses as it covers instructional methodology that is seldom covered in detail in most texts. College instructors will find the book a good choice for their classes based upon: the consistent format throughout the book; the “readability” of the book for students; the comprehensive coverage of systematic instruction; and the direct applicability to applied settings. Others providing instruction, supervision, and training to direct service providers will find this book useful, such as those working in schools as well as those in transition and adult service settings.