Heading to the New York Metro Abilities International Accessibility Conference? Don’t miss RESNA’s Scientific Paper Platform, a one‑hour, moderated session where leading researchers share real‑world findings with a clear focus on how practitioners can apply them immediately in daily practice. Attend this session and earn 0.1 IACET CEU. 

Check out RESNA’s Scientific Paper Posters, showcased all day during the conference. This format brings together cutting‑edge research, real‑world practice insights, and emerging policy developments that shape assistive technology and rehabilitation engineering. It offers an inviting space to dive deep into new findings, ask presenters your questions, and connect research to clinical practice, commercial innovation, and policy impact. 

Scientific Paper Platform

Date: Thursday, April 30th 

Time: 4:20 p.m. - 5:20 p.m. EST

Room: Main Ballroom

Abstract:

Across multiple domains of assistive technology (AT), individuals with disabilities encounter persistent challenges related to safety, mobility, accessibility assessment, and the translation of capacity into real‑world participation. This session presents findings from four studies examining fear of falling during transfers, gait behavior in real‑world environments, decision‑support for aging‑related accommodations, and privacy‑preserving mobile accessibility auditing. The studies show:

• A home‑based, crossover pilot study with wheelchair users with Multiple Sclerosis demonstrated that addressing fear of falling during bathroom transfers requires both person‑level capacity building and environmental modifications, with outcomes sensitive to the sequencing of interventions.
• Wearable motion capture data revealed that persons with blindness or low vision exhibit cautious gait patterns indoors and outdoors, with certain adaptations—such as slower walking speed and longer double‑support time—accentuated in real‑world outdoor environments.
• Development of the ACCESS for Aging Well online and mobile tool highlighted how structured assessments and predictive rule‑based algorithms can support older adults, caregivers, and service providers in identifying individualized accommodations for activities of daily living.
• Implementation of an on‑device face‑blurring feature (VideoSafe) for mobile accessibility auditing demonstrated a feasible approach to reducing bystander privacy risk while maintaining documentation quality for public‑place accessibility evaluations.

Collectively, these findings underscore the importance of combining capacity‑focused interventions, environmental fit, real‑world assessment, and privacy‑conscious technology design to advance safe, user‑centered, and scalable assistive technology solutions.

Learning Outcomes:

1. By the end of this session, learners will be able to identify user‑centered design principles and real‑world assessment considerations relevant to assistive technologies supporting mobility, safety, and activities of daily living.
2. By the end of this session, learners will be able to identify strategies to address barriers to assistive technology adoption—including environmental fit, contextual variability, and privacy concerns to improve long‑term usability, safety, and accessibility through capacity building, environmental modification, and technology‑enabled assessment.

Presenter: Harshal Mahajan, Ph.D.

Do Lab-Observed Gait Characteristics in Blindness and Low Vision Persist Outdoors? A Pilot Study

Presenter: Gaurav Seth

ACCESS for Aging Well: An online AT resource to help people age in place

Presenter: Karen Milchus, M.S.

myAccessTools VideoSafe: On-Device Automatic Face Blurring for Privacy-Preserving Accessibility Assessments

Presenter: Mohd Anayetul Karim Samaun; Rochelle Mendonca, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, FNAP

Scientific Paper Posters

Date: Thursday, April 30th - Friday, May 1st

Time: 8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. EST

Room: Promenade outside the Main Ballroom

Smartwatches' Influence on Health Behavior Change and Occupational Engagement Among African American Students

Presenter: Thierry Lineou, Ph.D.

Development of an ajustable transradial prosthetic socket with an integrated HD-EMG

Presenter: Charles Doyon

Interlimb Reflex Response After Locomotor Training With Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation in an Individual With Spinal Cord Injury: A Case Report

Presenter: Elizangela Pereira

Developing a web-based cross-device AAC system embedded with AI-driven assessment

Presenter: Ming-Chung Chen

Understanding barriers and supports for older workers with disabilities

Presenter: Megan Nickrent, MS

Comparison of presence and anxiety outcomes between lower-cost and higher-cost immersive virtual reality systems for mindfulness

Presenter: Sara Benham, OTD, OTR/L, ATP

WheelSafe: Leveraging HealthKit for Continuous Accelerometer-Based Wheelchair Fall Detection on watchOS

Presenter: David Peeler

Rethinking the service design of wheeled mobility device provision

Presenter: Laura Rice, PhD, MPT, ATP

AccessSlope-Android: engineering verification of iOS feature parity and cross-platform agreement for ramp and landing slope measurement

Presenter: Mohd Anayetul Karim Samaun; Rochelle Mendonca, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, FNAP

myAccessTools: implementation and preliminary verification of impairment-weighted accessibility scores

Presenter: Mohd Anayetul Karim Samaun; Rochelle Mendonca, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, FNAP

If you are registering to attend the New York Metro conference, please use the discount code RESNAMEMBER.

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