This study examines the importance of music in facilitating well-being for older people who have special needs and discusses how music can contribute to well-being and quality of life. The data derive from qualitative interviews with a sample of older Australians aged 60 years and above who live in rural and urban settings. The findings reveal music can provide many people with ways of feeling ...

Formal description of concepts so that it may be processed by computers has great promises for people with special needs. By making use of ontologies, improved user interaction with personal information management system is possible for these people. An ontology using semantic web technology is proposed which formally describes the mapping information about user’s impairments, and the available...

Medical care for special needs patients historically has been the domain of the pediatrician. However, now that people with a wide range of conditions are more often living into adulthood, internists need to assume care for an increasing number of special needs adults. In an effort to improve health outcomes for this vulnerable segment of the population, internal medicine residents need to have...

People interact with each other in many levels of attention, intention and meaning. This Interaction Continuum is used daily to deal with different contexts, adapting the interaction to communication needs and available resources. Nevertheless, computer-supported interaction has mainly focused on the most direct, explicit and intrusive types of human to human Interaction such as phone calls, em...

quality of life of mothers of children with special needs: a qualitative study    yaghmaei f [1] *, sahar m [2]     received: 29 sep , 2013 accepted: 16 nov , 2013   abstract:   background & aims: quality of life (qol) is important in today's society. by qol, the people’s experience of life could be measured. quality of life of mothers with children with special needs is the focus of this ...

We present preliminary work on a sensor-based system that we are currently implementing with the aim of monitoring the health of the elderly and people with special needs. The system functions both inside and outside the home of the monitored individuals, using sensors and GPS-enabled cellular phones. Its objective is to first learn the daily behavior of the monitored individuals, and then dete...

With the recent emergence of several new telepresence robot platforms, companies are investigating these technologies for ad-hoc conversations beyond the conference room. This technology has the potential to increase cohesion for people who work in a remote location away from their team. We hypothesize that seniors and people with disabilities may find similar benefits while remaining connected...

This paper reviews and examines the language used in literature that describes the educational and therapeutic use of microcomputers with people who have special needs. In the language of special needs computing two perspectives are identi® ed. One perspective focuses on the microcomputer technology while the other focuses on the microcomputer user. While the language of both perspectives ackno...