Smart Home Assistive Technology for Disability Support
Assistive Technology in Smart Homes
How we can use smart home automation to support people with disabilities
There are many advantages of smart home technology. We love the energy saving, user-friendliness and security monitoring aspects. But perhaps one of the greatest ways automation can be used in homes is through assistive technology. Leveraging the capabilities and existing solutions of smart home technology, we can apply solutions around the home that make life a bit easier for those with disabilities or the elderly. We recently completed a project which involved installing smart home technology for a client who has a disability, so this blog post will explore the solutions we applied to support his everyday living.
Assistive Technology Around the Home
For this project, our client needed to be able to easily control the lights, shades, fans, doors and gates in the home. He has difficulty using manual switches, so we installed voice control in the home so he can ask Siri to adjust things around the home. We installed KNX building management in the home paired with an ABB Voice Control gateway. This ties in with Siri Voice Control and the Apple HomeKit app.
Now he can ask Siri to turn the lights on/off or to a certain level. He can use his voice to set the blinds to different levels. He can even open the front door and the front gates in the home with his voice, or with the accessibly designed Apple HomeKit app. This app features large buttons for ease of use and can control all the automated features of the home, from anywhere in the world. From this app he can also set up time and day based schedules to suit his daily living – perhaps setting the bedroom blinds to open and close at a certain time, or the living room lights to turn on when suits him.
We also installed a sensor in the bathroom to turn on the exhaust fan if the humidity reaches a certain point, alongside some easy-to-use, touch sensitive switches around the home.
Project Video
Our YouTube video below takes a look at the project to fully demonstrate the capabilities.
We also provided an information poster for our client which he can refer to learn all the Siri prompts.
This was an awesome project to be involved with. We’re really happy to have used our experience in smart home automation to help someone. Please reach out to us if you’d like to add this assistive technology to your home or the home of a loved one.