B. Users’ assessment of digital assistive technologies

When it comes to digital assistive technology, the respondents were asked to state which of the assistive technologies from the list they would use and how often would they use it. As shown in Figure 4, most of them picked the option “sometimes”. Regardless of the type of disability, the most favourable choice from the list are wearables (M= 3.9, SD= 1.3), AI alerts (M= 3.7, SD= 1.3), and robots (M= 3.7, SD= 1.5), as well as autonomous wheelchairs and vehicles (M= 3.7, SD= 1.4).

Figure 4. Users’ intention to use digital assistive technologies

We also assumed that persons with different types of disabilities would prefer different assistive technologies, as not all are applicable to their access needs. Therefore, in this study we also enquired which assistive technologies respondents regarded as non-applicable, i.e. not appropriate for their disability, in aims at seeing which of these assistive technologies should be excluded from consideration. For the assessment of the assistive technologies that were considered non-applicable as per the type of disability, (table 1).

As expected, respondents saw that smart canes and automated captions were specialized tools for persons with visual and hearing impairments. Meanwhile, robots, AR, and AI alerts seemed to be applicable for respondents across all types of disabilities. Somewhat less expected, accessible navigation systems were welcome by persons with visual impairments and by persons with intellectual disabilities. AI alerts were deemed applicable by those with intellectual disabilities who were also open to other assistive technologies, like location-based alerts, AR, robots, and smart communication aids, and even autonomous wheelchairs.

Automated captions and AI alerts are seen as useful tools by respondents with hearing impairments. Persons with visual impairments would welcome accessible navigation systems, robots and augmented reality solutions. Meanwhile, those with physical impairments would prefer a variety of specialised solutions, such as autonomous wheelchairs and exoskeletons, to more general ones, such as wearables, robots, location-based services and to some extent augmented reality.