A Study on the Analysis of Factors Affecting Assistive Technology Device Need for People with Disabilities: Focused on Human, Activity, and Environmental Factors

It is important to consider the individual characteristics of Assistive Technology Device (ATD) for assisting people with disabilities in their daily activities. A representative method is to consider the four basic elements of Human, Activity, Assistive Technology Device, and Environment when providing assistive technology services (HAAT model, Cook & Hussey, 2002). In this study, the factors affecting the ATDs required by the people with disabilities in Korea were analyzed by applying to the HAAT model. The top five ATDs with high need were extracted, and the factors influencing the need for the top five ATDs among people, activities, and environmental factors were analyzed by conducting binomial logistic regression analysis. As a result of the analysis, the top 5 ATDs most needed by the people with disabilities in Korea are cane, safety handle, powered wheelchair, electric scooter, and home modification. These results indicate that they mostly require ATDs for activities of daily living related to mobility and movement. Age, disability grade, and whether or not to use public transportation were analyzed as factors that had a statistically significant effect on the need for ATDs. The limitation of this study is that there is a limitation in generalizing the analysis results of this study because there is a possibility that sufficient information on ATDs may not be provided when conducting a fact-finding survey of the people with disabilities. Nevertheless, the results of this study suggest that it is necessary to apply appropriate ATDs considering factors such as disability type, living environment, and age. The results of this study are expected to be used as basic data for the application of assistive devices suitable for the characteristics of the people with disabilities in Korea.