ALS University Student Project

Hello All!

I am a mechanical engineering student at the University of British Columbia. I am working with 3 other engineering students and we want to create a device that will improve the quality of life for a person living with ALS. For those of you who wish to give us feedback we would appreciate it so much! Here are some questions that would help us generate some ideas, and feel free to give us any other feedback that you feel would be useful for us! There more information we can gather about your daily routines - the better!


1) What is the most difficult task that must be done everyday and how do you currently do it?
2) For those of you who have limited or no speech, how do you communicate with people and are you overall satisfied with the current technology?
3) If there was one thing that you wish you could do on your own what would that be?
4) Are you familiar with computers, and would you use a communication tools that required knowledge of computers?
5) Would you be comfortable using an automated device that could help you reposition yourself?
6) What is the easiest way to travel by wheelchair, do you operate an electric chair, or have someone push you
7) What are some features that you wish your chair could perform?
8) How do you eat or drink? If you can no longer chew, would you use a device that could help you chew?
9) Would you use an eye-gaze tracker if it was easy to use and user friendly?
10) Is there anything that your caretaker is responsible for that you wish you could do on your own?

These are just some of our questions, we will generate more questions depending on the answers!

Thanks so much! You are very inspiring/wonderful people and we look up to you very much :smile:

Welcome to the forum! Are you doing this in conjunction with ALS BC? I have been involved with Engineering students in the past and enjoyed it.

Have a look at my website, if you have not already seen it, as a few questions are answered there.

Living and Surving with ALS

Go to the Content Index and look for Text-to-Speech and Using a Computer. If you have any more questions after that don't hesitate to ask.

Thank you!

I should add, if you are not aware, that we have had several groups of students in our home to see and talk about this. If you are interested you are welcome to visit and we will tell you what we know. And how we perceive everything.

Hello Joel!

Thank you very much for the link to your website, it has been extremely helpful to us these past weeks!

We have decided to create an assistive reading device to help with holding, navigating and retrieving the reading material. The device will be mountable and adjustable and require minimal effort to set up.

If you are interested, please fill out our survey which will help us make decisions about what kinds of features we are going to add to it!
heres the link: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGxoS3FMejZSMlNXdzNGMF9GS2xZeVE6MQ

Thank-you for the invitation to your homes. We would very much love to speak with you in person, if possible. How can we arrange this?

Andrea

ALSBC Assistive Reading Device Student Project

Hello All!

My name is Andrea. I am a member of a UBC engineering student project sponsored by ALSBC. We are creating an assistive reading device to help with holding, navigating, and retrieving readable content. It is going to be switch adaptable and mountable, and can be used for reading digital material (eg. eBooks)

If you are interested, please fill out our survey! It will help us make decisions about what kinds of features we should include!

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGxoS3FMejZSMlNXdzNGMF9GS2xZeVE6MQ

Have a great day!

Andrea
UBC Mechanical Engineering

Re: ALSBC Assistive Reading Device Student Project

Thanks Andrea, I filled out the survey.

Thanks BarryG! Have a good day!

Done. Interesting questions.

John

My husband is able to access his Kindle via eyegaze system. Is this the kind of thing you are talking about?