Empowering Adults with a Cognitive Disability through Inclusion of Non-linear Context Aware Prompting Technology (n-caps)

Many employment barriers exist for people with cognitive disabilities [1-5]. However, one of the most significant barriers is support for learning tasks associated with a specific job [4-7]. Challenges for many individuals with cognitive disabilities include difficulties reading instructions, following directions, memory, attention, and more. Recent literature indicates that individuals with cognitive disabilities have the lowest collective employment rate at 42%[8]. Individuals with cognitive disabilities often experience challenges in following multi-step or complex directions. Jobs in which task sequences can vary depending on environmental conditions can confuse workers with cognitive disabilities. In addition, the salaries available for job coaches, and subsequently the number of available job coaches are declining. Many people with cognitive disabilities also have a variety of literacy challenges. They experience difficulty in both processing and producing written output. Examples include comprehension, symbol recognition, generating written output, etc. The incorporation of context aware prompting technologies into the work environment is one possible solution that can help to reduce the confusion experienced by workers with cognitive disabilities. Context aware prompting technologies integrate task prompting systems and environmental sensors into a single solution. The task prompting systems provide instructional aides, much like a job coach might, and task sequence support which identify the next actions that must be performed on the worksite. Meanwhile, the environmental sensors provide contextual awareness. The sensors can indicate whether a given sequence was actually performed or identify any situational anomalies (i.e. a widget placed in the wrong location).