In today's episode, Dr. Rosalie Wang, an occupational therapist at the University of Toronto, joins me for a fun chat about technology, design, participation, and belonging in our communities. We talk about how technology can be both a bridge and a divider. What occupational therapists can do in the tech arena, how tech could be made accessible and inclusive, and how it's important to include disabled people and older adults at the table when we're designing technology so that we can all use it in our day-to-day lives.
You can follow Rosalie on Twitter (@RosalieWangOT) and find out more about her research here: https://ot.utoronto.ca/about/core-faculty/rosalie-wang/
In today's episode, Dr. Rosalie Wang, an occupational therapist at the University of Toronto, joins me for a fun chat about technology, design, participation, and belonging in our communities. We talk about how technology can be both a bridge and a divider. What occupational therapists can do in the tech arena, how tech could be made accessible and inclusive, and how it's important to include disabled people and older adults at the table when we're designing technology so that we can all use it in our day-to-day lives.
You can follow Rosalie on Twitter (@RosalieWangOT) and find out more about her research here: https://ot.utoronto.ca/about/core-faculty/rosalie-wang/
Hi folks. Welcome to the, do what you love podcast. It's Anna here, and I invite you to join Emily and I, as we dive into doing what we love, having conversations connecting the dots between doing belonging, becoming and wellbeing. Through our podcast, we will explore factors in our world, in ourselves and in activities that affect participation and share ideas for actions to increase opportunities and choices for doing and wellbeing. This podcast is personal opinions and it is intended to be used in informational manner only. Under no circumstances should this podcast substitute for a call or a visit with a trusted healthcare professional that is, or can become familiar with your lived experience In today's episode, Rosalie Wang, an occupational therapist at the University of Toronto, joins me for a fun chat about technology, design, participation, and belonging in our communities. We talk about how technology can be both a bridge and a divider. What occupational therapists can do in the tech arena, how tech could be made accessible and inclusive, and how it's important to include disabled people and older adults at the table when we're designing technology so that we can all use it in our day-to-day lives. Welcome Rosalie!
Rosalie:Thank you. Thank you, Anna for having me on your podcast. I'm really excited to be here.
Anna:Thank you. Yeah, we're excited to have our chat today. So we always like to start our podcast with this question: what is one of your favorite things to do and what does this occupation bring to your life?
Rosalie:I think now with COVID in particular with people needing to be home as much as possible, as much as they're able. One of the things that we do- so myself and our dog- go out for daily walks, for, a fair stretch of time. And, I think it's obviously an opportunity to get some exercise for all of us, but it is also really meaningful in the sense that we have some time focused being together, being outdoors. And also, the dog is really happy when she's out, and so she's smiling at people and they smile back at her, which really is just, brings a lot of joy. It's also time that my husband and I decompress from doing our work-related things. And we have lots of conversations about, politics and, society technology, and, things that are like, philosophy, I think overall it's, it's, physical and cognitive stimulation at the same time. And it's also very social. And so it's kind of, I think, it's kind of a slam dunk in terms of occupation and what it brings and the meaning it imparts.
Anna:Lots of different experiences from it there that are good for your wellbeing.
Rosalie:I think the, the other part of just loving the profession is: We have the opportunity to make use of so many of our interests to sort of leverage opportunities for our clients. If you're a lover of arts and sports and, literature and science and understanding anthropology and sociology, it's all in there. And so, everything that you can imagine is part of what occupational therapists can use for therapeutic purposes or to understand people.
Anna:Yeah, thinking of that, I recently, I love board games and I work with lots of people post- concussions, so I just did a task analysis of different board games. Like what skills do you work on? Like for cognitive skills, oculomotor skills and visual processing skills. So now we can have this like therapeutic tool for intervention and grade participation, not just in terms of time, but also in terms of the complexity of the demands.
Rosalie:Exactly! Exactly. So all of those, things that are possible in life and activities that we enjoy, that other people enjoy, we use that for therapeutic purposes and that's just like, yeah, it's, it's just one of those things where you just think, okay, that's actually kind of like a dream. Of, how you can, help. It's definitely my dream job.
Anna:So what are you up to now, Rosalie?
Rosalie:Yeah. So, I'm working as an assistant professor at the university of Toronto. I practiced as a clinician for about six years and it didn't take me that long to want to go back to school and pursue graduate school. There were a lot of questions that I had when I was working. And there were gaps in interventions that were available for us to help, clients or to improve our capacity to enable occupations. So lots and lots of questions that I had a lot of unanswered Intervention- related issues. The focus of my research is really on enabling technologies, enabling environments, looking at how we can support people to be as engaged in their occupations as possible and be included in society and, my other area of interest and how this all intersects is technology. I work primarily with seniors, caregivers and therapists in our projects looking at things like robotic rehabilitation for post-stroke rehab and also sort of robotics and personal assistant robots for, assisting people who have a cognitive impairment to be able to carry out daily activities looking at other kinds of information and communication technologies, to support social inclusion. The other big part of the work that I've been doing is looking at enhancing equitable access to technologies and Canada. Looking at how we can Improve our programs and our policies to be able to support enhanced use and being able to get people to have the interventions that they need to do what they would love.
Anna:When we were getting ready for the interview today. You brought up how technology can be both a bridge and a divider for both justice and access to opportunities. What are your thoughts on this?
Rosalie:So I think, with everything being said about the benefits of technology and it helps us in so many different ways, the flip side of that is that if we think about equity and access it can also be a significant divider. And so when we think about the opportunities that technology can afford in, supporting people to improve their health, be able to be more independent in their daily activities. But we also potentially can see that as technology advances there's a significant possibility that it will leave people behind. So a really good example is automation. We see factories that are using robots and other technologies to be able to create manufacture all of that. And also artificial intelligence is being increasingly applied in different settings. For example- I think in Japan there was an insurance company that actually used, or is using AI to make decisions on some claims, in which case, the adjudicators no longer have their jobs. And so we can see that as this progresses, there could be more and more people who are displaced in jobs that are not necessarily the service jobs that we initially think about, but could be jobs that are requiring some decision-making. And if it's replaced by AI, we do have a lot of concerns about: what are people going to be doing for their productive occupations? We know that productivity is a significant part of people's lives and not just for, maintaining their livelihood, but as a core aspect of their wellbeing. And so there's potentially fear-mongering around robotics or robots and AI taking over and lots of work these days looking at the future of work. But I think from a very sort of pragmatic and realistic perspective, it's definitely something we need to stay on top of and be very proactive about how we might deal with the implications of that. And I think as OTs, we do have a significant role that we can play in this because our understanding of the meaning of productivity and occupation and productive occupations and the implications for people's wellbeing and their health. But we also do have a broad understanding of people who are aging, who may have some cognitive changes who would like to stay working, being productive. But also for people who are already having difficulties with employment. So people who are living with disabilities, who have difficulty maintaining or gaining employment, that's another subset of people who would be potentially left behind if we're not more proactive in our policy processes or actions where we can try to make sure that there's both a safety net that people can rely on to make sure that they are protected. But also that they have the ability to pursue some of these productive occupations in scenarios where there's a lot of push towards advancing the technology.
Anna:In occupational therapy. We look at the whole big picture, so we don't just look at the physical environment. We also look at the social environment and we look at things like ableism and ageism and segregation and how that impacts participation. What are your thoughts on this?
Rosalie:As we were talking about how technology has the potential to bridge opportunities, but also potentially be a great divider in the sense of limiting or creating fewer opportunities for people, I also feel that we need to have a lot of the discussions in order to be able to proactively try to minimize the possibility that technology could be tools for ableism or ageism or increasing segregation. As we see the example now of a lot of people using technology to be able to be productive at home. And so the whole sort of being able to work at home with things like video conferencing and internet and all of these things- these opportunities were not necessarily available to people with disabilities in the past. They were, in some scenarios, being denied job opportunities because it required them to be physically present at a place. But now we see that it's completely possible for some jobs to be located at home. And it it's something that COVID is highlighting: that it's possible in some jobs to be able to work at home. I think we need to be very, very cognizant that some of the previous restrictions on people who have disability is really a social construction based in ablest beliefs. It is possible and I think it's something that we need to be able to advocate much more strongly that there are a lot of things that we construct as barriers that we need to make sure that we look at and to be able to support those policies and practices that foster more inclusion.
Anna:Yeah, that's helped clients. Some clients that I work with in the community when we're planning return to works, this whole COVID has actually enabled them to return to work sooner because now they have more control over their work environment and can work from home.
Rosalie:Yeah. So thinking about technology use and ageism in our society, we have this idea, some of us, that older people are not interested in using technology or people who have cognitive impairment may not be able to use technology. But again, those are ideas that can be readily debunked. Just from our research, looking at the use of technology for by older people: they want to use technology and the individuals who we interviewed, who self identify as having some cognitive impairment they're also very interested in using technology and I think it is a great disservice for us to not create those opportunities or to be able to create the technology that would engage seniors and individuals with cognitive impairment in the design process to make sure that the technology that is out there really is benefiting. And so I think in the world of technology design or technology marketing, or, all of those areas, I think we do have a responsibility to be able to support people using the technology. Most people do want to use technology. And sometimes it's because of these barriers that we put in place, whether they be technology- related barriers, the design is not as usable as it could be, or policies that don't support people using it, or the lack of educational opportunities to use it. I think those are big areas that we can work on.
Anna:Yeah. It's like when we're looking for our spot at the table, it's also about making sure that the older adults or the disabled people are also there so the technology is actually useful for them to use. Thinking about occupational therapists role in the tech arena and policy and the way that tech is executed, what strategies do you think that occupational therapists and scientists can use to proactively assert our values for wellbeing?
Rosalie:I think education is really a big part- we don't necessarily need to be, experts in AI to sort of understand what the implications might be for society. But I think it is our responsibility to learn a bit about what the potential problems could be if we're moving in this direction. I think knowing some of the basics and underlying issues around the implementation of it helps us to gain a better understanding. And again, being very client centered, looking at clients from their perspective: how it impacts their lives working as a clinician there are things that we can do to advocate for our individual clients in their situations. But also our role as advocates for promoting occupation and supporting inclusion and participation. I think we can play roles in, areas like policymaking or advocates in different organizations that can promote inclusion. And I think the other part is as advocates, we need to get ourselves in the conversations.
Anna:Thanks Rosalie! In the next five years, what opportunities and roles do you see occupational therapists pursuing in the technology arena?
Rosalie:Yeah, so I think there are quite a lot of different roles that OTs can take in this arena. OTs have a lot of strength in the area of designing technologies- in contributing to design, leading design to be able to create the technologies that will help people to engage in their occupations and be included. And so I'm actually really, really excited because the students that we have in our U of T program- hearing them talk about design thinking and how they want to be able to use it in their OT practice. And the students who are coming up to me and saying how do I get into the area of design if I'm looking at creating more accessible and inclusive environments?""How do I get involved in universal design?" And all of these things get me really excited because I feel like... that there's a lot of scope for OTs to be able to use their skills both in the sense of our focus on our clients and what their abilities are, and how we can optimize those opportunities...but also just thinking about our very holistic perspective in design. I think it's really critical to having an OT on a design team I think is fantastic. And I mean, there's more and more industry opportunities in that area as well. So beyond academic rules, in terms of looking at a design processes and designing environments, I think lots of industry opportunities for using our design skills and our OT skills to create new technologies and environments. But also I think being at the tables to design different or to discuss designing of environments and cityscapes and how our cities will look like to foster inclusion.
Anna:Thank you Rosalie. What is one last golden nugget that you would like to share about assistive technology, participation, health, and wellbeing?
Rosalie:So I think the golden nugget that I would like to share about assistive technology participation in health and wellbeing is that as OTs, we have a lot to offer in terms of design of technology and advocacy for inclusion and participation and getting people involved in supporting technology and its use in inclusion and supporting opportunities. And I think we have a responsibility and we also have the skills to be able to lead in this area. And so what I would like to do is encourage OTs to learn about technology, get out there and promote opportunities and make sure that the technologies that are being created and implemented out there are going to support our values for inclusion and participation. And again, leave no one behind.
Anna:Thank you so much Rosalie for joining us today. Have a great rest of your day!
Purple Planet Music - Feelin' Good (2_14) 140bpm-2:[Music Plays]
Amelia:Music for the Do what You Love podcast was provided by Purple Planet,a royalty free download service.
Do you care about justice, belonging and accessibility in our communities? We do too! And our podcast actually has a sister site called beyond COVID. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn at,@BeyondCOVID and online at www dot beyond COVID dash 19. Dot com Here we have a blog, weekly wellbeing missions, a doing library, and ideas that we can take during COVID for our wellbeing, and beyond so we can promote justice and belonging in our communities in solidarity with disabled people. We love to hear about initiatives that you're up to in your communities to spread accessibility, belonging, and wellbeing. And we'd love to chat! So if you'd like to get in touch you can email us at beyond covid at gmail dot com.Thank you and I hope you enjoy your day Bye!