Assistive technology in music therapy

If you’re working in aged care, disability or early intervention you’ve likely come across clients who use assistive technology (AT). There are so many products available now, from low-tech everyday supports like glasses and hearing aids, to more complex products such as audio recording speech to text pens.

Access to appropriate AT can dramatically improve a client’s quality of life.

Increasing independence, facilitating communication, learning, playing, and just participating more fully in everyday life, the benefits are enormous.

In order to support and assist our clients we need to know about AT.

There’s no doubt that our clients can benefit from a whole range of AT but most music therapy courses don’t teach us much about it. And even if you did cover AT in your training, technology improves so rapidly that new products are coming on the market all the time. It can be hard to keep up with it all.

So we’re providing you with a useful snapshot of the most current and popular types of AT in this one hour tutorial with Dr Anita Swanson.

The main focus of the tutorial will be on AT for the primary areas of communication, vision, hearing, and cognition/attention.

We’ll also cover how to improve accessibility and inclusivity in your clinical services and physical therapy spaces, speaking inclusively, advocating for AT for your clients, and how to create accessible environments online.

Bonus content activities and extra resources will provide tools to support your learning and help you identify areas where your practice, therapy space and online presence can be more inclusive and accessible.