One control everywhere for everything: Preliminary trials with the wiseDX
Sue van de Loo & Ben Symonds,
Regency Park Rehabilitation Engineering
Integrated controls are an exciting and relatively new option for people wanting to do more than just simply drive a powered chair. These new systems enable a single control unit to operate not only a powered chair but also a speech generating device, emulate mouse function to access a computer, as well as use infrared operated devices to control the environment (e.g. television, video cassette recorder, telephone, lights). The great advantage of the integrated control is that the user is able to independently toggle between all the different modes, without requiring assistance to change over the control unit. For example, it eliminates the need to move a joystick out of the way for a mouse or the need to reconnect a single switch to a speech generating device from the scanning unit used for driving. Members of the Regency Park Rehabilitation Engineering Department received certification in the use of the wiseDX in October 2003. During this training the wiseDX was trialled by two clients, a switch user and a joystick user. An account of the clients, issues and process will be presented and the importance of teamwork and resources will be highlighted.
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