Many assistive technologies are designed for common disabilities. However, some people have unique disabilities or circumstances that fall outside these categories, requiring custom-built assistive technology to meet their specific needs.
O Dom Maior serves a community of children and young adults with severe motor disabilities. They approached the DCitizens consortium in 2024 to develop a bespoke assistive service that could enable a teenager with multiple disabilities (i.e., visual, motor, and speech impairments) to access his smartphone, namely its communication and entertainment functionalities (calls, texting, music).
Existing accessibility services have proven inadequate, as screen readers require fine motor control, motor-impaired services are visually demanding, and voice interfaces do not work with atypical speech. We co-created an always available smartwatch accessibility service that enables access to everyday communication and entertainment applications. The smartwatch can be used as a standalone device or paired with a smartphone. The project is now beyond the deployment and testing phase and is currently being used daily by our co-creator.
The source code is available at: https://github.com/Interactive-Technologies-Institute/Wear-Access
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