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New ABILITY
with Technology—Behind the Scenes of a Smart Home
When I was seventeen,
my friends were playing with a gun they didn’t know was loaded.
The gun went off and the bullet hit me in the neck, paralyzing me from
the neck down,” explains Derrick Daniels, the owner of the first
ABILITY House to be built with smart-home technology. “The doctors
didn’t think I was going to make it through the night, but I had
one of the quickest recoveries they had ever seen.” Daniels spent
10 years following the incident living at his mom’s house, facing
the frustration that comes with living in an inaccessible home. “I’d
been ready to move out on my own for some time; [my mom’s] house
wasn’t built for someone who uses a wheelchair, so a friend of mine
who’s a real estate agent took me around to see places.” As
his search progressed, it quickly became evident that nearly every home
would require extensive modification to be wheelchair accessible.
“Then one day I realized I hadn’t prayed about it. So I did,
and within two weeks I was in a gas station and I met a man named Chris
Wright,” says Daniels. “I told him I was looking forward to
moving out of my mother’s house, and he told me about the ABILITY
House program.” Wright, who was the first person with paraplegia
to own an ABILITY House, provided the necessary information, and three
months later Daniels was approved for a house of his own.
The ABILITY House program works with ABILITY Magazine and Habitat for
Humanity to construct accessible homes for low-income families with disabilities,
while engaging people with disabilities in the community as volunteers
to help build the homes. Every ABILITY House employs universal design
elements and meets the criteria of visitability (i.e., people with disabilities
who don’t live in the home can still visit it with ease). The basic
features include a minimum of one no-step entrance, hallways at least
36” wide, and one bathroom on the first floor with a 32” doorway.
In addition, each ABILITY House is built to accommodate the specific needs
of the homeowner. The first ABILITY House for a person who has quadriplegia,
Daniels’ home was constructed in collaboration with the Habitat
for Humanity of Greater Birmingham and sponsored by BellSouth and ABILITY
Magazine.
A typical family home may be riddled with obstacles and barriers for a
person who has little or no mobility. Without assistance, telephones can’t
be answered, a light can’t be dimmed and a guest cannot be welcomed
into the home. When ABILITY learned the nature of Daniels’ disability,
the program looked for resources to make his home not only accessible,
but also equipped with technology to help him live as independently as
possible. It asked Hewlett Packard (HP) to help, and HP’s support
allowed Daniels’ home to become a smart home, outfitted with extensive
computer-assisted mechanics and environmental controls. Additionally,
SureHands Lift and Care Systems contributed a lift mechanism to move Daniels
from shower to bed on a rail system in the house.
Al Bates, HP district manager, and Larry Fruge, HP customer engineer,
coordinated the technology and helped Daniels learn to use it. Says Bates,
“When the PC for Derrick arrived, Larry quickly realized this was
more than just an installation. He explained to me that the PC was designed
to control the lights, doors, TV, radio and other appliances in Derrick’s
home. Not only would he need to test the system, which required learning
all the third-party software, but he would also need to teach Derrick
how to use it. Although this would take considerably more time than we
had anticipated, Larry didn’t hesitate.” Fruge elaborates,
“I spoke with Michael Takemura, the director of HP’s Accessibility
Program, and he gave me some background information. I quickly realized
this would involve more than an installation and demonstration. I needed
to load the third-party software that had been selected to allow Derrick
to control the devices in his home—the hardware itself was not going
to solve any of his problems. More importantly, I needed to learn how
to use this software so I could show Derrick what these tools were intended
to do.”
Fruge took the system home and installed it in his own home to test it.
“I started teaching it to control the devices in my house, such
as the lights and appliances,” he explains. “I was able to
control items in some rooms but not in others. All new houses, as a general
rule, have two AC phases from the input boxes. Some rooms are on one phase
and some are on the other. As long as I stayed on the first phase I could
control all the devices, but if I moved over to the second there was no
communication.” Fruge knew that resolution of the phase problem
was critical because the PC must send signals over the existing AC wires
to communicate with household devices. The manufacturer suggested installing
a device to join the two phases in the house’s electrical box.
Fruge met Daniels the day he was installing the computer system in the
ABILITY House. “I heard an automated wheelchair. I stopped what
I was doing and went into the living room and said, ‘You must be
Derrick.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Who’s Derrick?’
I replied, ‘Don’t mess with me, Man, I know it’s you,’
and he laughed. Derrick is quite a kidder. He has a real good sense of
humor, and that’s the way he seems to live his life. He also has
a very positive attitude, which I noticed right away; it spoke volumes
to me about his character.”
Fruge showed Daniels how to control devices in his home with the PC and
mouse, a reflective dot placed on Daniels’ forehead. A third-party
device called a Tracker sat on top of the monitor and followed the movement
of the dot to control the cursor and open programs. By moving the mouse
over certain on-screen keys, Daniels could even type Word documents. He
also received a professional voice-activated diction package, which was
his favorite piece of software. By the next day, Daniels was able to control
all the devices, including lights that had been installed outside to give
him a sense of security.
Daniels and Fruge continued to work together. “I went back not as
a representative of HP, but on my own,” Fruge states. “HP
had already gone way beyond what we had been asked to do. I had come to
like Derrick. He seems to have an instant friendship with everyone he
meets, and we just clicked. But what I noticed the most about Derrick
was that the first time I talked to him about what the computer was going
to do, he lit up like a Christmas tree. I had not seen that in somebody’s
face in a long time. To me, that is what makes life worth helping someone—when
you see, for the first time, that ray of freedom: being able to do something
without having to ask someone else to do it for you; being able to tune
a radio on your computer for yourself, or control the volume, without
asking somebody to turn the channels for you; being able to create a Word
document by yourself. Seeing his face it was all worth it.”
Daniels’ next goals are college enrollment and a degree in computer
science. “Moving from my mother’s house to the ABILITY House
has been just amazing,” he relates. “At my mother’s
house, I always had to wait for a strong friend to come over and carry
me to the bathroom. I never thought stuff [like this lift system] could
be built. I’m still learning to use my PC, but as far as controlling
the appliances and the lights, I’ve got that down pat.” Accessing
the Internet, in particular, is a new excitement. “I’m still
getting used to having a computer. Sometimes, I will call my mother to
send an email for me and then I remember, I can do this for myself! “I
used to come by here every day while they were building my house. It just
amazed me how people would come from all over to help someone they didn’t
even know. I saw the foundation, and then four months later the house
was built. Sometimes I sit outside on my porch and I am overwhelmed because
I’m sitting at my very own house.”
Compiled from an article by Holly Higgins
ABILITY Magazine
Other articles in the Loni Anderson issue include Letter from the Editor
— Rebuild with Accessibility; Senator Harkin — Embryonic Stem
Cell Research; Humor — Cell Mates; Headlines — iBOT, Drug
Therapy and Hurricane Aftermath; Recipes — Soups for the Soul; Tuberous
Sclerosis — Disease with a Million Faces; COPD — What Smoking
is Really Doing to Your Lungs; ADA Update — 15 Years and Counting;
Laughing Matters — 6th Annual Comedy Showcase; Nursing School —
Students with Mulitple Disabilities; RespiteMatch.com — Matching
Caregivers with Consumers: World Ability Federation; Events and Conferences...
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