The group of Occupational Therapy students at UNISA I spoke with yesterday about how to use tools to do life with disability. The course title is “Enabling Occupation” Occupation being any activity in this case. I like to simplify that to mean “Helping to do stuff”. Which ain’t a bad definition of what a tool does really.
Over 60 this time, think I broke my previous record of keeping people’s attention for 2 hours. The young, and not so young, now days impress me with their acceptance of people and of openness to new things.
An authentic voice helps, always will, no matter the medium.
Dave
[tags]occupational therapy, students, tools[/tags]
life tools 
Invaluable PPT! Would it be possible for you to do it in VoiceThread? This way you can use the same photos and add your voice comments to each slide and then anyone, anywhere can use your experience as a resource.
It would be so helpful to me to have you explain how your use some of your devices to help you achieve independence. We know everyone works out what works best for them and your thoughts and perspective would be awesome to have.
Karen. I present to groups at the UNI based on my experiences over 26 years and use these slides as an adjunct. The sessions last 2 hours and I explain and share lots about the devices and concepts I’ve learnt. Theres a lot of spontenaity and some quite personal interaction. I will seek to record such a session when I’m asked to present next and make such avalaible publicly.
Thanks for your comment. Where are you from?
Dave
I recieved the following email from Kate:
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Hi David,
I am a first year Occupational Therapy student. Firstly thank you for coming to speak to us the on Monday, i really enjoyed the session!
Secondly i was wondering if you could give me some more information about how you transfer in a plane? From my research i found that Qantas do not let people take their wheelchairs on the plane, so how do you move around if necessary?
Thanks again,
Kate
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Kate, I’ve only been on relatively short flights, 5 hours max. so I’ve never had to move from my seat during a fight. I’m not sure how others get on on long flights with toilet etc.
As to getting on/off the plane. The airlines have these dinky little narrow chairs that just fit down the aisles inside the plane. I’ve traditionally been transferred from chair-chair-seat-chair-chair by having two persons manually lift me. There are specialised lifting devices designed to use for lifting inside the plane from the tiny chair to your seat in the plane. I’ve oly ever been subjected to using one of these twice in the same airport – Darwin. I say subjected as no doubt while the staff had been trained at some stage, most had no idea how it worked. A lot watched as they probably thought it novel (it wasn’t). While these devices work fine, they take a good working knowledge to operate effectively – there’s little room for error in the plane.
I think the OT school should arrange to go down and see these devices and experience them. Talk to the staff about their practices. This might even make the staff more competent and confident in handling them when needed.
As usual, this is based on my experiences. Maybe others reading might be able to share their experiences. Or even someone from the airlines comment.
Regards,
Dave