Mental disability and communication technology-some thought about problems and possibilities

Mentally disabled people in today´s societies constitute a very significant minority. In most industrialized countries of today, the trend is to move mentally disabled and elderly people from institutions to homes of their own. This means that people who have not been trained to take own initiatives or cope with practical everyday matters, are sudden supposed to do so. The shift in life style and move towards integration demands technical support, not least better telecommunications and safety systems. Regrettably very little consideration is being made on behalf of the categories of citizens mentioned above. There are two kinds of barriers to be mentioned. One has to do with the poor design (ergonomy) of equipment and service facilities. The other problem has to do with the fact that technology often is not well adapted to the way a confused or mentally disabled person communicates. In order to offer remote communication facilities to mildly and moderately mentally disabled people in Sweden, projects have been going on since the late 1980s, starting with still picture telephony. In the area of safety systems, experiments are going on with video communication accompanying ordinary, voice based emergency call systems. Utilizing Cable TV systems is one possibility, but also ISDN 2×64 kbps may be useful. Another aspect of safety is the utilization of positioning systems based upon, e.g. satellite navigation (Global Positioning System) or locating systems based upon radio triangulation