Roger O Smith

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee | UWM · Department of Occupational Science and Technology

Capturing the outcomes of assistive technology (AT) is essential to know what works and what is needed. People across the globe are working to close the gap of unmet need for AT, and to enable access to quality AT products and services. Inconsistent terminology, measures and a lack of coordinated systems prevent the sharing of knowledge, and the la...

Date Presented 03/22/24 Comprehensive accessibility assessments are extensive and time consuming. The implementation of a branching question system is necessary to make them more efficient. However, such a system could negatively affect the reliability of the assessment. Primary Author and Speaker: Qussai M. Obiedat Additional Authors and Speakers:...

Date Presented 04/20/2023 OTs do not receive sufficient exposure and training regarding public building accessibility. This study examines the educational effect of a self-paced learning protocol and reports the interrater reliability of a new accessibility assessment tool. Primary Author and Speaker: Qussai M. Obiedat Additional Authors and Speake...

Date Presented 04/21/2023 Light and sound measurements were collected to determine whether accessibility results varied across devices as a result of new hardware. The results displayed differences in the data and indicated that algorithms in apps need to be adjusted to account for this. Primary Author and Speaker: Mason A. D. Drake Additional Auth...

Date Presented 04/21/2023 This presentation reports on a survey of 198 people with disabilities who shared their experiences with medical devices used at home and in health care facilities, highlighting the significance and complexity of device inaccessibility. Primary Author and Speaker: Maysam Ardehali Additional Authors and Speakers: Rochelle Me...

The MED-AUDIT (Medical Equipment Device – Accessibility and Universal Design Information Tool) prototype demonstrates the potentials of this measurement approach to assess the accessibility of medical devices. This study investigated the inter-rater reliability of the MED-AUDIT. It was hypothesized that MED-AUDIT would demonstrate good to excellent...

People with ambulatory disabilities face significant barriers when navigating their everyday environments. MyPath is the system we have been developing to provide more accessible routing options for people with ambulatory disabilities based on surface-induced vibrational patterns and user-specific data. Guided by previously developed crowdsourced d...

Introduction: The myAccessTools accessibility application allows evaluators to conduct thorough building assessments to obtain valuable accessibility information without prior accessibility knowledge. A primary feature of the app is the ability to provide individual impairment scoring for 16 different types of disabilities. In addition, these score...

In the era of advanced technology, mobile devices are playing a significant role in helping people with disabilities (PWD) to enhance their quality of life by allowing them to be more independent in performing daily activities and facilitating social inclusion. Currently, the rapid development of technology presents one of the major challenges in d...

Despite existing revised legislation on the accessibility of public buildings in the United States, people with disabilities continue to experience barriers that limit their participation and engagement in the context of the community. This researcher developed, cross-sectional survey study, that explored trends in accessing public buildings, acces...

Limited research informs the implementation of web-based and mobile learning (mLearning) protocols for the assessment of public building accessibility in occupational therapy graduate students. This study tested the feasibility of a self-paced protocol designed to teach students how to evaluate community environment accessibility. Students across f...

Research Objectives To investigate the accuracy and consistency of sound across mobile iOS devices and models to compare the measurements and adjust algorithms for collecting accessibility information in applications. Design Device Reliability Assessment. Setting Measurements were collected in a research center devoid of environmental sound. Par...

Research Objectives To describe the iterative development and early content validity testing procedures of the myHESTIA app. myHESTIA is an app designed to be used by aging adults, people with disabilities, and/or their support persons (e.g., family members, caregivers, handymen, community health workers) as a home safety screening and intervention...

Motor imagery (MI) is arguably one of the most common brain-computer interface (BCI) paradigms. The decoding process, in many cases, involves the use of small amounts of data gathered over a period. The decoding performance might therefore be limited, due to the size of available data. Also, the non-stationarity of signals across sessions and subje...

The wide use of motor imagery as a paradigm for brain-computer interfacing (BCI) points to its characteristic ability to generate discriminatory signals for communication and control. In recent times, deep learning techniques have increasingly been explored, in motor imagery decoding. While deep learning techniques are promising, a major challenge...

Date Presented 04/02/2022 Consumer-driven apps can improve practice efficiencies. We are using participatory action research (PAR) with purposefully recruited six-person teams to engage in a look-think-act-reflect process over a 3-year project with HESTIA NextGen apps. PAR outcomes are catalytic to the development of taxonomy, processes, interventi...

Date Presented 04/02/2022 OT programs are still missing a standardized assessment and a training protocol to teach and measure community accessibility. This study presents the preliminary results of an examination of students’ accessibility knowledge improvements across five different OT programs after completing a learning protocol that consists o...

Geared manual wheelchair wheels, a recently developed alternative propulsion mechanism, have the potential to alleviate the high upper extremity demands required for wheelchair propulsion and help decrease the risk of secondary injuries in manual wheelchair users. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of using geared manual whe...

Introduction: The AccessTools accessibility application from the AccessRatings for Buildings (ARB) project currently requires users to possess knowledge of building accessibility to accurately evaluate restaurants. Because not all potential users of AccessTools have prior knowledge regarding restaurant accessibility, the myAccessTools app was devel...

People with ambulatory disabilities (PwDs) must make several decisions regarding navigation and participation within the community every day. To best understand navigational needs and community accessibility, it is crucial to directly collaborate with these individuals. Through interviews conducted within the National Science Foundation’s Innovatio...

State-of-the-art techniques (SOTA) for motor imagery decoding have largely involved the use of common spatial patterns (CSP) and power spectral density (PSD), for feature extraction. Other frequency transforms, such as wavelets and empirical mode decomposition (EMD) have also been used but the aforementioned two have been the most popular. For clas...

Finding barrier-free accessible path through the built environment is necessary for wheelchair users. Researchers have identified the effect of surface vibration on the health of wheelchair users and proposed various solutions to identify and annotate mobility barriers. However, the effects of surface-induced vibration on accessibility is yet to be...

Research Objectives To test the feasibility of a hybrid web-based and mLearning protocol designed to train students to assess the accessibility of public buildings in the community. Design This multi-site randomized feasibility trial involved students engaging in the web-based learning module and public building evaluation using AccessTools app. S...

America’s housing affordability crisis has had various indirect costs on health and safety among people living with disability. The skyrocketing housing prices have exponentially increased with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic leaving many people at risk for eviction after federal and local moratoriums providing protection during the pandemic exp...

Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations. The health and safety of OT clientele demand students' proficiency in a multitude of evaluation and intervention approaches. Subsequently, educators must use evidence-based instructional approaches to facilitate efficient high-quality learning....

There is the need for enhanced processing techniques that aid the development of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), considering their wide use for communication and control. Several paradigms exist for developing BCIs. One of such is motor imagery (MI). MI-based BCIs have been implemented in a variety of ways. Key factors such as the device type, ta...

Objective : The purpose of this study was to develop and establish the preliminary validity of the Restaurant Accessibility and Task Evaluation Information Tool (RATE-IT), an electronic survey for evaluating restaurant accessibility for people with disabilities. Methods : A multi-phase method was used to develop and validate the RATE-IT. The taxono...

Purpose Comprehensive and efficient home safety assessments are needed to provide quality interventions for community living. This study explores early career and experienced home evaluator perspectives on content and usability of HESTIA, a home safety assessment app. Method Four early career and five experienced practitioners rated the HESTIA app...

Purpose: This paper describes international actions to collaborate in the assistive technology (AT) arena and provides an update of programmes supporting AT globally. Methods: The World Health Organisation (WHO) identifies the severe global uneven distribution of resources, expertise and extensive unmet need for AT, as well the optimistic substanti...

Aims: Develop a new pain assessment for youth with communication challenges. The Guard-Putzer Pain Assessment Domains (gPAD) mobile application (app) was designed and tested as a universally accessible way for youth, ages 7-12 years, with a developmental disability (DD) to express their pain experiences through self-report. Methods: A two-phase pro...

For more than two decades the assistive technology outcomes literature has featured repeated calls for clinical research to demonstrate the impact of device recommendations, as well as substantial discussion of tools for measuring AT outcomes. Unfortunately, data are still not routinely collected in most AT service delivery settings, which undermin...

Performance of many activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living involve technology, such as an electric toothbrush or a self-checkout register at the grocery store. Unfortunately, more than 60 million people with disabilities in the United States struggle to use these technologies because of inaccessible designs. Occupati...

By adding accessibility metadata to an accessible archive, we were able to improve the user experience for all researchers.

Visualizing differences in accessibility between medical devices can help consumers make more informed purchasing decisions.

This paper is based on work from the Global Research, Innovation, and Education on Assistive Technology (GREAT) Summit that was coordinated by WHO’s Global Cooperation on Assistive Technology (GATE). The purpose of this paper is to describe the needs and opportunities embedded in the assistive product lifecycle as well as issues relating to the var...

During the first 100 years of occupational therapy, the profession developed a remarkable practice and theory base. All along, technology was an active and core component of practice, but often technology was mentioned only as an adjunct component of therapy and as if it was a specialty. This lecture proposes a new foundational theory that places t...

Objectives: We sought to define an occupational therapy intervention to promote medication management and to evaluate the acceptability and effectiveness of the intervention. Method: Nineteen adults with chronic health conditions and poor medication adherence participated in a two-group, blinded, randomized study. They received either an occupat...

To the Editor In an Original Investigation in a recent issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, Dr Choudhry and colleagues¹ evaluated the effectiveness of 3 low-cost reminder devices on medication adherence. While the study¹ is highly rational when viewed from the medical model of disability, at its core this study is about the effectiveness of assistive t...

We investigated the complex reasoning processes of professional home evaluators involved with home safety assessments. Twenty evaluators with varied professional training engaged in in-depth qualitative interviews. Two primary themes emerged: integrating expertise and tailoring interventions. Within these themes, evaluators expressed differences an...

Date Presented 4/1/2017 Evidence-based apps require multifaceted decisions during development. We describe processes used in the development of HESTIA to mitigate bias, including integrating technology and home assessment literature, data from research findings, and iterative design between software and content experts. Primary Author and Speaker:...

Occupational therapy practitioners enable clients to improve performance in everyday occupations. As health care reform precipitates changes across health care service organizations, occupational therapy professionals must seize the opportunity to apply their unique skills and perspective to meet the changing needs of clients and other stakeholders...

Presentation describing the Fred Sammons Archive Project.

Using mobile applications to condense available information about a built environment for accessibility rating.

Current state of development of the Access Tools/Access Place project.

Describes the methodology involved in developing an archive website for an occupational therapist that is accessible.

OBJECTIVE. Many people with chronic health conditions fail to take their medications as prescribed, resulting in declines in health and function. The purpose of this study was to perform a Phase I feasibility study to understand whether an integrated occupational therapy intervention could help people with chronic health conditions improve their ad...

Presentation describing the developing Fred Sammons Archive Project, an online assistive technology and history resource.

Accessible structures and environments can mean the difference between an exemplary quality of life and a poor one for millions for Americans. However, determining accessibility of a particular built environment can be a difficult task - for any given environment, there are many types of measurements to be taken. Delivering the information to be co...

One of the most time-consuming parts of determining the accessibility of a built environment is measuring distances within the environment. Each distance must be within a particular range in order to be deemed properly accessible. Measuring with traditional rulers and measuring tapes can be tedious, confusing, and difficult for those who want to ra...

For those who have lost the ability to move their hand, going through repetitious motions with the assistance of a therapist is the main method of recovery. We have been developed a robotic assistive device to rehabilitate the hand motions in place of the traditional therapy. The developed assistive device (RAD-HR) is comprised of four degrees of f...

Date Presented 4/8/2016 Fred Sammons’ research and clinical expertise resulted in one of the best-known assistive device companies. His outreach to consumers and academics brought standardization to self-care devices, improved access to treatment options, and advanced the occupational therapy profession. Primary Author and Speaker: Roger Smith Addi...

Designing usable and understandable surveys for assessing the built environment.

Use of AT as a means of intervention to support a client to participate in a desired occupation has always been an integral component of occupational therapy practice. Occupational therapy practitioners collaborate with the client and other professionals and use their understanding of a client's functioning, the task or occupation, and the environm...

OBJECTIVE. Accreditation standards require entry-level occupational therapy students to understand, critique, and design research. However, the extent to which students should be embedded in research projects is unclear. The purpose of this study is to understand the benefits of student immersion in research on student learning and research quality...

Methodical studies on Smart-shoe-based gait detection systems have become an influential constituent in decreasing elderly injuries due to fall. This paper proposes smartphone-based system for analyzing characteristics of gait by using a wireless Smart-shoe. The system employs four force sensitive resistors (FSR) to measure the pressure distributio...

Date Presented 4/16/2015 Millions of Americans are struggling to correctly take their medications as prescribed, with unfortunate consequences. In this study, we describe how occupational therapists (OTs) are addressing medication management in day-to-day practice. Common barriers and opportunities for clinicians and researchers are discussed.