Common Assistive Technologies

types, evolution, mainstream technologies, getting used to it

Mick McQuaid & Madison Russell
mcq@utexas.edu

University of Texas at Austin

28 Aug 2025

Types of assistive technology

  • screen readers (e.g., JAWS, VoiceOver)
  • captioning
  • switches
  • magnifiers
  • braille devices
  • … and more!

Once only in specialty devices, now …

  • integrated into TVs
  • integraded into PCs
  • integrated into smartphones
  • integrated into tablets
  • integrated into OTT (set top) boxes
  • … and more!

Assistive technology is used by people without disabilities

  • autonomous cars
  • speech recognition
  • language translation tools
  • … and more!

Pause to demo screen reader

Examples

Adaptive Driving

Adaptive Driving

Braille Keyboard

Braille Keyboard

Braille iPhone

Braille iPhone

Hands Free Mouse

Hands Free Mouse

One Hand Keyboard

One Hand Keyboard

Xbox Controller

Xbox Controller

Zoom

Zoom

END

Colophon

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