Perspective Chapter: Digital Assistive Technologies

The use of digital technologies has been described as a facilitator integrating services and offering facilities to support individuals with impairments. In this chapter we identify level of advancement, trends, and challenges in the growing area of digital assistive technologies. Interview with experts and a literature search were performed. The outcomes of this study shown that the generic use and adoption of technologies involves complexity and changes in several aspects and, specifically, requires changes in the overall practice environment. However, the real challenge is not to identify technologies or to prioritize products, policies, or praxis, rather it is to build infrastructures, to match levels of maturity with products or services, and to reduce the technical, and socio-economic inefficiencies that constrain the further development of the area