Assistive technology to promote leisure and constructive engagement by two boys emerged from a minimal conscious state.

Background: Post-coma persons with multiple disabilities may represent a challenge to rehabilitation centers, due to their clinical conditions. Moreover, they can failed to engage adaptive responses aimed at the self-management of environmental stimuli.

Objectives: To assess the impact and social rating of a new assistive technology set-up for promoting constructive engagement by two post-coma boys emerged from a minimal conscious state.

Technology-assisted programmes to promote leisure engagement in persons with acquired brain injury and profound multiple disabilities: two case studies.

OBJECTIVE. To evaluate technology-assisted programmes for enabling a woman and a man with brain injury and profound multiple disabilities to acquire leisure engagement. METHOD.

Communication opportunities via special messaging technology for two post-coma persons with multiple disabilities.

This study extended the assessment of a special messaging technology with two additional post-coma adults who had emerged from a minimally conscious state, but showed multiple disabilities including profound motor and communication impairments. For each participant, the study involved an ABAB design, in which the A represented baseline phases and the B represented intervention phases with the special messaging technology. The technology involved a net-book computer provided with specific software, a global system for mobile communication (GSM) modem, microswitches, and prerecorded verbal lists of persons' names and messages.

Use of microswitch technology and a keyboard emulator to support literacy performance of persons with extensive neuro-motor disabilities.

Objective: To assess the effectiveness and acceptability of microswitch technology and a keyboard emulator to enable three participants with extensive neuro-motor disabilities to write words.

Method: In Study I, two participants triggered an automatic scanning keyboard and selected/wrote letters via a small sliding movement of their hand(s) activating a touch/pressure panel (microswitch). In Study II, a third participant used the sliding movement and panel and a vocalization response with a voice-detecting microswitch.

Persons with multiple disabilities accessing stimulation and requesting social contact via microswitch and VOCA devices: new research evaluation and social validation.

The first of these two studies assessed whether 11 participants with multiple disabilities of 5.3-18.2 (M=10.