A study found that individuals with cognitive disability experienced lower scores in general self-efficacy and time management skills than with individuals without cognitive disability. Luckily, assistive products can compensate for a lack of time-processing ability, helping people with cognitive impairments facilitate effective daily time management. By specifying guidelines that are relevant to creating a daily time management support system, ISO 21802:2019— Assistive Products – Guidelines On Cognitive Accessibility – Daily Time Management aims to increase greater usability of assistive products.
How Does Time Management Impact Cognitive Accessibility?
Effectively handling time is essential in today’s society. Successful time management is important to health, job satisfaction, family life, and stress management. People with limited ability to manage time show a heightened dependence on others and greater need for support, exacerbating their vulnerability. When the ability to manage time is impeded by cognitive ability or limitations, independence can also be affected.
Deficiencies in time management skills are especially common among individuals with cognitive disabilities such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, or intellectual disabilities. Individuals with cognitive impairments can experience an inability to keep track of time, which impacts their ability to gauge the proper amount of time to set aside for certain tasks. Children, adolescents, and adults living with various types of cognitive impairment might need support with daily time management. As such, ISO 21802:2019 covers guidelines for cognitive assistive products supporting daily time management.
What Is ISO 21802?
ISO 21802:2019 specifies principles of cognitive accessibility within the area of daily time management. This standard gives guidelines for design application for features and functions known to increase the accessibility of products and systems. These products and systems are used to support daily time management for people with cognitive impairment regardless of age.
Products and devices can be both digital and analog and include both mainstream products like smartphones, alarm clocks, and assistive products. ISO 21802:2019 provides directions on how to think when manufacturing a product, when giving support and service, and when matching the product to the needs of the person and the environment regarding daily time management.
What Are Assistive Products?
ISO 21802:2019 details that an assistive product is any product (including devices, equipment, instruments, and software) used by or for persons with disability. Assistive products can be used for participations, to prevent impairments (e.g., activity limitations or participations restrictions), and to support or substitute for body functions/structures and activities. They help people with disabilities cope with everyday functions like hearing, seeing, communicating, and moving. Wheelchairs, crutches, walkers, voice recognition programs, screen enlargement applications, pencil grips, hearing aids, and prosthetic limbs are all examples of the many types of assistive products that exist.
Assistive Products for Time Management
Assistive time products for time management help promote orientation to the time of the day, date, week, month, season and/or year. They also help individuals better manage time required to complete usual or specific activities, such as preparing to depart from home, going to the gym, and taking medications, as well as less frequently occurring events like planning for vacation. Examples of assistive products for time orientation include the use of calendars, quarter-hour watches (with an alarm function), adapted calendars, and other visual devices with or without pictures.
ISO 21802:2019— Assistive Products – Guidelines On Cognitive Accessibility – Daily Time Management is available on the ANSI Webstore.