Professional Practice in Assistive Technology

1. Larry F. Cobb
October 22, 2014

2.  The person that provides assistive technology
and his/her professional issues
 Ethics of Practice
 Quality Assurance
 Liability

3.  A specialist in assistive technology
application; typically has professional
background in engineering, occupational
therapy, physical therapy, recreation therapy,
special education, speech-language
pathology, or vocational rehabilitation
counseling

4.  Each practitioner brings something
important to the table.
 They must be well grounded in their
disciplines and have knowledge and skill in
assistive technology and the industry in
general.

5.  Ethics is defined as “the study of conduct and
moral judgement….and the system or code
of morals of a particular profession.
 Each ATP must comply with the code of
ethics of their discipline
 A professional association typically develops
the code.

6.  Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive
Technology Society of North America
(RESNA)
 Interdisciplinary association of people with
common interest in technology and disability
 Purposed with improving the potential of
people with disabilities by promoting
research, development, education, advocacy,
and the provision of technology and the
people engaged in these activities.

7.  Standards are often based pertaining to each
specialty is important since most
practitioners are from different disciplines.
 The standards are generally based of
certifications

8.  A broad area of fundamental importance to
the safe and effective application of assistive
technologies
 Two Basic Consideration
 The quality of services rendered
 The quality of devices supplied

9.  Three views of what constitutes quality
 The consumer – judges the quality on how daily
activity is improved in specific areas of application
 The practitioner – generates measures of
performance and attempts to judge quality of
services and devices against these measures
 The purchaser – Are the services or devices cost
effective?

10.  Professional certification is way that
professional organizations use to measure and
report an individual practitioners degree of
competency.
 A body of knowledge must be agreed upon
unique to practitioners in an area of certification.
 A set of professional competences must be set
and a way of evaluating an individuals
knowledge of must be developed and
implemented.

11.  Several types of standards that can be
developed
 Relations by federal legislations as with
manufacture and production of assistive
technology
 The FDA has is way of classifying medical devices
 Devices can be rated by development of
compatibility and performance standards

12.  The selection of device is based on what a
person is able to do now, not what he or she
will be able to do.
 To evaluate effectiveness, you have to look at
the entire process and not just the service or
device.
 The determination of success is based on
measurements of outcomes related to the
success the consumer achieves using the
assistive technology system.